PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Single Engine - Coast out at Folkestone rather than Southampton - Over cautious?
Old 25th Jun 2011, 09:47
  #25 (permalink)  
IO540
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: EuroGA.org
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
A GPS-equipped beacon transmits the lat/long but not AFAIK on the audio channel. It would be great if it did send it as audio (synthesised voice) on the 121.50 channel. The lat/long gets transmitted (on the 406MHz) once a minute to the satellite, which then relays it to the international S&R network.

This is why, if you ditch, having something which gives you a human-readable GPS position is a good idea. It can be a £50 GPS from a camping shop, but then you need a handheld radio as well (with which to call up a nearby aircraft - typically an airliner on 121.50). Or it can be a satellite phone, all of which contain a GPS and all of them are capable of sending somebody an SMS with the position, with just a few button presses. A pity that Falmouth have no means of receiving these messages (I did speak to them about it) All they would need to do is buy a mobile phone and publish the number. I have a few peoples' mobile numbers programmed in my satphone. But a satphone is not a good long term solution because - unless you are on a contract and keep paying £££££ like all the kids with their £35/month Iphones - any prepayment expires pretty fast, so you have to keep an eye on it.
IO540 is offline