"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...

...

Another thing: The Ameri-King ELT claims to have "voice capability" in
their ad. What the heck would one use that for?

I asked the sales rep at Spruce about this, and she really didn't have
an answer. I suppose we could visualize a crash where the panel radios
have been rendered inoperative, the ELT is still intact, you are
somehow still ambulatory enough to remove your microphone (the
Ameri-King doesn't come with a mike, that I can see), crawl to the back
of the plane and plug it into the Ameri-King unit, so that you could
yell for help? (It can't receive -- only transmit.)

Seems far-fetched to me.
--

A few years ago (thirty some), my brother and I were flying up the Alaska
highway in a Cessna 120 when we came up to a range of hills right at the
Canada - Alaska border that we couldn't get over due to low ceilings /bad
visibility so we decided to set down on a grass strip just short of the
border (I don't remember the name). Now, when I say grass strip, I mean
"grass strip". No buildings, no vehicles, nothing. Just a runway and a bit
of a clearing off to the side. After a while a Tri-Pacer drops in with a guy
and his young son who were on the way back home, but couldn't make it over
the hills either. We had a nice evening chatting in the tent pitched in the
mud. And, the next day things had cleared up some so we decided to try and
make it into Northway - just across the border. The Tri-Pacer got off first
and we followed. Now, Northway is a few miles off the highway, so once we
cleared the hills we "cut the corner" and headed directly to the airport at
a few hundred AGL over nothing but swamp and trees. About 5 miles or so
short of the airport, the guy in the Tri-Pacer announces that his engine has
failed. He sets up an approach to a bit of a clearing, sets it down very
nicely, rolls a short distance, then the mud took over and they flipped over
the nose and stopped upside down. After a short wait, both occupants
appeared outside the airplane and were sitting on the wing. They didn't look
too bad, but it was hard to be sure. So, someone got the idea to try and get
them to transmit with the ELT. So I grabbed our ELT out of the bracket
behind the seat and held it out the window with a microphone as my brother
made a low, slow, pass. They got the idea, got their ELT out, plugged in the
mike, and were able to tell us that they were pretty much OK. We couldn't
talk to them, but we answered their questions using the "wag the wings for
yes" technique. Except for a brief run into Northway for gas, we were able
to stay on station until they were picked up by a helicopter.


So, it's not so far-fetched as you might think. With the plane on it's back,
probably leaking fuel, turning on the master would not be the smartest thing
to do. And, the ELT worked fine as a transmitter.


--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
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