Originally Posted by
Goody35
True, most of the contract aircraft in PNG are fitted with Spidertracks or SkyConnect. They are usually configured to report position every 2 minutes, meaning you have a maximum search radius of about 3 miles from the last reported position. This of course would be very useful information for a SAR effort, but the reality in PNG is you can be a hundred feet above 200' tall 8/8 jungle canopy directly over where an aircraft that has gone down and still not see the wreck, or any indirect evidence in the canopy itself. In which case a 3 mile search radius still requires a hell of a lot of searching.
Regarding the usefulness of ELT, I can't remember a missing aircraft in PNG actually ever being detected by the system. They either don't go off, get damaged, or the signal is shielded by the terrain making remote detection impossible. They do however go off from time time via inadvertent activation, and they are detected then. But as I say, I can't remember the last time an aircraft wreck in PNG was detected by the system.