You may want to check into the legality of using a marine EPIRB in an aircraft.  Contact your local FSDO to determine if it satisfies the requirements of 91.207.  When you buy an EPIRB there’s a registration card that you need to fill out and return that indicated the owner, contact information and the type of vessel in which the unit is being installed.  If the unit is for marine use, aircraft will not be one of the choices.  If you want something to supplement the ELT you may want to check into a PLB (Personal Locator Beacon).  These are typically sold at outdoors and sporting goods shops.  These are intended for hikers and other outdoors type activities.  Get one of these and put it in your flight bag or first aid kit just in case.  Activating one of these will trigger a similar scenario as an ELT.

 

If you do get a unit that transmits on 406MHz, make sure it also broadcasts on 121.5 or 243.  If you don’t, the SAR resource that will most likely come to your aid, CAP (Civil Air Patrol), will be unable to home in on your signal.  Their airborne and ground equipment is only capable of receiving on 121.5 or 243.  They will have to rely on the lat/lon that was received from the EPIRB when it was activated (it does have an internal GPS doesn’t it?) as a starting point for the search patterns.  If you activate it in the air, they may be searching in the wrong place, especially if you travel any appreciable distance before you contact the ground.  On the ground in a heavily wooded area, it’s quite easy to miss a downed aircraft even from 100 feet away.

 

To get an idea of what’s happening on the receiving end of the signal, see the links below.

 

http://level2.cap.gov/documents/u_081503135122.pdf

http://www.cap.gov/visitors/members/operations/operations_training/aircrew_flightline/   

    Especially the aircrew training slides and reference text.

    For actual crash site pictures, see the mission scanner presentation, slides 193-224.

http://www.cap.gov/visitors/members/operations/operations_training/index.cfm?nodeID=5308

    How the ground teams prepare and what they’re doing to find you.

 

Another suggestion would be to contact your nearest CAP squadron.  Ask them about what to do in case of an unplanned off-airport landing (AKA: crash) so as to increase the likelihood of surviving and being found.

 

Raymond Balister

L-ES

-----Original Message-----
From: marv@lancair.net [mailto:marv@lancair.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 11:21 AM
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Subject: Re: [LML] Re: EPIRB vs. ELT