Tractor driver - did you mean you want to confirm that the RAF is superior or that our homers are less than perfect?
The Griffins in Cyprus have a more modern system that copes well with multiple beacons and shows you which quadrant they are in. Our Chelton homers have a simple left/right needle indication that moves with the signal from the beacon. Multiple beacon homings are possible but dealing with more than two gets tricky; usually when doing a double beacon homing we try to seperate the signal indications and go for the closest/strongest first. We have been moaning about the homers for many years but the wheels turn slowly in the Sea King IPT
Cyclic Gal, I have been involved in too many searches not to recognise when the MRCC has run out of ideas and there is a heavy reliance on SARIS which is only a computer program and can't think for itself. I only found out the other day that SARIS doesn't cater for land mass - we were tasked to complete a sector search for a PIW with a radius of 1 nm and a datum that was almost on the shoreline so half the search area was over land! I have also seen, on many occasions, the reluctance to terminate a clearly pointless search because SARIS doesn't do logic, only number crunching.
I am not having a go at MRCC staff and I agree that generally one unit on scene doesn't have the overview to cancel a search - but often MRCCs underestimate the ability of a helicopter crew to assess the effectiveness of a search and the suitability of the search area.
I heartily agree that multi-agency ops are the way forward and knowledge of each others capabilities is vital to make this work.