had about 1 hour’s endurance.10 At about 1357 the pilot of the SAR helicopter requested via relay
through the pilot of another aircraft that the pilot of UXG change from 129.0 MHz to 121.5 MHz.
The pilot of UXG reportedly confirmed the frequency change and the crew of a commercial flight
later reported to ATC that they had received a transmission from UXG on 121.5 MHz. The SAR
helicopter continued to receive the PLB tone on 121.5 MHz but no voice transmissions. No
recordings of transmissions on 121.5 MHz were available.
Why on earth would you ask a pilot in distress to switch to a frequency that has the very beacon you asked them to with on? Surely that would be the kind of distraction the poor pilot did not need, and that emergency tone is scary enough let alone when you are in trouble and screeching in your headset.
If this is some kind of AUSAR SOP it needs to change.
Then back to the area frequency…………
Then an attempt to get another frequency change to 123.45, all the while the pilot is struggling in IMC. Des managed to keep this thing flying for a long time in IMC, I can only wonder what the extra workload of frequency changing did to his workload. Single Pilot IFR hand flying in cloud is hard enough when trained. This might have been the bit that broke him. I hope everyone learns something from this even if it was not the cause of the lost control.
PS Before anyone gets all upset, I am not slagging the help crew who were trying their hardest to help in a bad situation. Just a lesson to be learned here.