My personal view on yet another one of Dick's threads, about AMSA's guidance is as follows;
If a transmission on 121.5 is going to save me because someone's monitoring that frequency, I'm going to activate my 406MHz ELT or PLB. It will transmit on 121.5.
It just so happens that my 406 beacon will also transmit my GPS position to the satellites and on to all the rescue coordination centres in the world. If high flying RPT hear it, they'll be reporting it to ATC.
Having used the 121.5 frequency to my best advantage, I can also transmit on the Area frequency. It may be that nobody will hear me. But chances are that someone will. In that case I will be utilising three potential channels of Comms (beacon transmission on 121.5 plus beacon transmission on 406 plus voice transmission on Area) rather than just one: voice transmission on 121.5 YMMV
