Time for folks to wake up to reality with regard to ELTs.
Method by which AusSAR was alerted to emergencies related to aircraft crashes or inflight emergencies -
Third party concern - 24%
Cospas - Sarsat - 7.5% (i.e. how everybody thinks that it works)
Aircraft detection of beacon - 7.9% (Guard frequency monitoring)
ATSB findings
here.
Your poor cousins to the east of you have been through all this before.
Get yourself an Iridium tracking device (i.e. Spidertracks or similar) it works as it addresses all the reasons that an ELT doesn't.
Tiered cascade calling and messaging to whoever you want. It will even call AMSA if you want.
Not approved or condoned by the authorities as an "official" system but you can circumvent all that by just putting their contact details in the
call and message cascade.
No I do not work for them but have been using one for about 6 years all over the planet.
We carry an ELT because we have to but always make sure that the Spidertracks is functioning.
We operate in pretty remote areas where flight following and SAR is pretty sketchy. With Spidertracks someone can actually watch me in near real time.
Magic.
