False ELT
 

Well this is embarrassing! A firm knock on the door at 3:30 AM this morning. Co-incident to that, as I look out my bedroom window, I can see a helicopter running on my runway. Two very well equipped military rescue personell at my door saying I have an ELT transmitting. I instantly know what I've done wrong :uhoh::uhoh:...

We walk down toward the planes, and I stop at my car. They laugh and say "It's in the trunk of your car?!" Yup, I just removed both to take them for annual certification. I tucked them in a safe place in the trunk, with the switches selected off, and the antennas removed. But, I did not guard the switches!! The certification place was not open, so they rode back home in the trunk and bumped each other. One turned on the other's switch.

With no antenna, and in the trunk, we were all surprised they even heard it. It's an old 121.5, but I guess it still works well. They said that the signal was faint, and they had just happened to hear it while flying over from another call.

I apologized for not guarding the switches off, and wasting their time. They were very pleasant and gracious. I am reminded of the value of SAR, who is often not thought of until we really need them. What a reassuring thought that they can find the ELT I carelessly put in my trunk, with no antenna on it!

Thanks Guys, I relearned a lesson I should already have known....

Well done for 'fessing up! :ok:

A very valuable lesson for all of us, but it is amazing that a usable signal was propagated by a transmitter with no antenna in a "Faraday trunk". ;)

PS That's "Faraday boot" for any confused Brits. :E

If it is any consolation , the last TC safety seminar I was at was run by the fine people at Trenton and was on the subject of ELTS ( specifically the new 406s)

he reckoned that most of the 121.5 call outs they responded to ended up being in either someone's basement, trunk or storage locker or occasionally garbage dumps.

The advantage of 406 ELTS, he said , was that as they are registered to the owner, you get a phone call as opposed to a Herc doing a low and over!

One late night when I was working as an A&P, me and a buddy where trying to gain access to an ELT on a jet. The screws were frozen on the cover so were gave it a little elbow grease. Somehow we set it off, turned the radio to 121.5 and to our horror heard the blare loud and effing clear. We spent the next 15 minutes jumping in various airplanes trying to reach approach control on the radios, since the tower was closed. Then the owner called, grumpy and groggy wondering why NORAD was waking him up about his airplane that must have crashed somewhere when it should be down for maintenance. We laughed about it later, but at the time we were young and dumb and thought our careers were going up in smoke.