Region 4 S: ELT Mandatory

"Chris OCallaghan" wrote in message
om...
Tim,

I'm disappointed by you lack of knowledge. Your word carries weight as
an expert in these matters. Get expert. For example, 406 ELTs are dual
frequency, broadcasting on 121.5 as well.

Please read what I have said and understand I am not trying to argue the
issue but offer some insight as to what I have found from my own
investigation. I don't consider myself to be an expert but the information
I gave I believe to still be true and have consulted the manufacturers and
my distributors for their advice and understanding of the rules and
proposals to new rule making.
You are correct in that the new 406 ELT's will broadcast on 121.5 as well,
also as a side note the 121.5 ELT's also already broadcast on 243.0 MHz.


Suggesting that marine
EPIRBs are the same as Aircraft 406 ELTs is the worst kind of
obfuscation.

I never stated these EPIRBs were in any way the same as Aircraft ELT's, in
fact what I said or tried to say was these were NOT and should not be
confused with Aircraft ELT's and I in fact stated just a couple of the
differences.Please also note that I do not, and have not ever offered or
suggested using anything but Aircraft type ELT's in aircraft......

While they take advantage of the same satellite
resources, the boxes themselves are very different. A sunset date for
121.5 satellite coverage has been set for February of 2009. As I've
noted, there are many other reasons the 406 units are better. These
are just a few. There are also diffences in
unit-to-satellite-to-receiving station visibility, accuracy, and time
to verification of signal. Not the least factor is the false alarm
rate, which introduces an adminstrative delay when any 121.5 signal
appears. Here's a snip from the SARSAT link.

For more information look at
http://www.artex.net/images/pdfs/121phaseout.pdf from Artex, who BTW is one
of the manufacturers I have spoken with about these issues.


"Different types of ELTs are currently in use. There are approximately
170,000 of the older generation 121.5 MHz ELTs in service.
Unfortunately, these have proven to be highly ineffective. They have a
97% false alarm rate, activate properly in only 12% of crashes, and
provide no identification data. In order to fix this problem 406 MHz
ELTs were developed to work specifically with the Cospas-Sarsat
system. These ELTs dramatically reduce the false alert impact on SAR
resources, have a higher accident survivability success rate, and
decrease the time required to reach accident victims by an average of
6 hours.


I'd still like to see where these statistics come from, I see the print, but
nothing to substantiate this, it sounds to me like this is coming from
someone who is trying to politicize this and is pushing for this.........I'd
really like to see something more graphic with these statistics.
From my own experience, I have not heard of any ELT failures to transmit, at
least not in ELT equipped gliders......have you????? Can you name just
one?????
I have however heard of several instances where ELT's have be useful and
have triggered in crashed gliders...
There have also been several "False ELT signals" this we can verify, and in
fact this has been somewhat of a problem with ELT's being set off by hard
landings and even gliders being trailered, which tends to suggests they can
and do go off rather easily and should function in a crash, not the
reverse.......also, even new 406 ELT's will also be prone to this since any
and all ELT's will still be designed around this same triggering
system.(G-Switch)

Understand, I am not trying to argue against 406 ELT's.sounds like a good
idea to me, but they will not become a standard for some time, even 2009 is
still 6 years away and many potential owners will by then have changed
gliders and moved on....the 121.5 MHz ELT's are until then a very good and
affordable option for anyone who is concerned ...making any rule to require
glider owners to install $1500 ELT's to participate in a contest I think is
going to meet with a lot of resistance and should any rule like this pass, I
think contest participation will decline...on the other hand, should a
contest organizer require the installation of a less than $200 ELT I think
many potential participants may just decide this is not at all a bad thing
and go ahead with an installation that can and has proven to be useful
Respectfully....
Tim Mara



Due to the obvious advantages of 406 MHz beacons and the significant
disadvantages to the older 121.5 MHz beacons, the International
Cospas-Sarsat Program have made a decision to phaseout 121.5 MHz
satellite alerting on February 1st, 2009. All pilots are highly
encouraged both by NOAA and by the FAA to consider making the switch
to 406!"