On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:14:10 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
[lots of amateur hour SPOT/GEOS stuff deleted)

Another point I don't the US Sailing report make about the whole transmit with no GPS coordinate issue... that could happen when the GPS in a SPOT or InReach, or an ELT/EPIRB/PLB GPS cannot get a good sky view (say inside a capsized yacht, under tree canopies, down in a ravine, there are always a possible scenario). Or the GPS has to do a cold start acquisition and is still doing that when you press "SOS", hopefully it will start transmitting with the coordinates if/as soon as a GPS the fix is acquired.

But here again an EPIRB/PLB/ELT wins.... if the 406 MHz beacon signal from that device gets out at all (and these devices use a relatively high power burst designed to do that) it is picked up by the geostationary satellites in the SARSAT/COSPAS constellation. If the EPIRB/PLB/ELT has a GPS unit and it has a fix that fix data is sent as well as the unique device ID that is registered to the owner. If the EPIRB/PLB/ELT does not have a GPS or the GPS cannot get a fix then the polar orbiting satellites in the SARSAT/COSPAS constellation start Doppler triangulating a fix on the 406 MHz beacon. A Doppler fix at 1 to 3 nautical mile accuracy is nowhere near as accurate as a GPS fix, but its pretty damn good if it is all you have... and SAR teams then RF direction find on the 121.5 MHz and/or 406 MHz beacon (all these devices do at least those two beacon frequencies, some also do the military 243 MHz). I hope all glider pilots know that, for even the 406 MHz ELT/PLB if you think somebody is in distress tune to 121.5 and listen for the 121.5 beacon, (at least in the USA) the 406 Mhz PLBs (but not ELT or EPIRB) have a morse code "P" dit dah dah dit, added to the 121.5 MHz beacon) -- becasue the FCC was really worried about idiot consumers tripping these things off accidentally.

Even if there was no GPS installed or GPS fix broadcast on 406 Mhz, the USAF coordination folks at least have the info that your unique beacon is signalling distress and can start calling around tryign to find out what is going on while the Doppler fix is being acquired. The Doppler fix takes around 30 minutes or so. Anyhow all a well proven shaken out system that if I was in real distress I'd want to be using, certainly over SPOT. As Ramy says the two way texting of InReach is also impressive/useful. Still I am biased and would want InReach in the glider (with a great sky view for tracking) and a PLB on my parachute harness. Yes a PLB not an ELT because they are too hard to install/properly mount the antenna and the automatic activation is very unreliable).

In this particular case the skipper and crew made many awful decisions, including not having a automatically deploying EPIRB aboard.

Darryl