Originally Posted by
spinex
Makes you think, I may have to be a little more diligent about carrying my ipad and running ozrunways for every flight out of the circuit; I understand they can delve into your account and follow your tracks if requested by AMSA (and CASA no doubt....) At the very least that would cut down the time spent searching for the bits should I deck it somewhere.
Yes that is correct. Ian was an OzRunways user but he didn't take his iPad this time. We got a call from AMSA fairly soon and scoured our database but there wasn't a single track out of YMUR so unfortunately we couldn't help.
Yes please take your iPad, buy a sim card (preferably something that roams on the Telstra network), and turn on traffic. Again, we
only give your tracking information to AMSA and ATSB for the purposes of flight safety. The two guys who crashed the chopper on the beach recently were flown past and somebody even landed a few hundred metres away, but nobody saw them. Once we gave them a precise lat/lon to search, they managed to find them in time. I've done a lot of SAR in the P3 before and I tell you what, people are tiny and VERY difficult to see, even when you know where they are.
ATSB also have a special power under
Transport Safety Investigation Act 2003 - Sec 32 to request information such that it becomes protected. An example is the high resolution track log of the
VH-CQA Swan River crash.