Can ADS-B provide position information for Search and Rescue?

On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 9:08:38 PM UTC-8, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.


I'm not sure what point you are making. Flightaware tracking for flights without an IFR flight plan is next to useless.

Airport surface movement tracking at an airport that has ADS-B ground station coverage does not relate to say mountainous areas where lots of glider fly that might have large areas of poor ADS-B coverage. Like around parts of the CA/NV great Basin. ]

The original question of how useful is this really comes down to where you are flying and what accident/landout/SAR scenarios you are trying to mitigate. I really don't see the point of worrying too much about ADS-B for this.. With InReach tracking available at relatively low cost, and supporting text messaging (handy for non-emergency landouts). Sure the FAA can pull up records of ADS-B flight tracks, if you happen to be in ground station coverage, How long that takes to get in SAR situation who knows, and if you think the glider just landed out, well good luck... just go get an InReach (and maybe consider a 406MHz PLB as backup). If you really really cared about this I'd go ask local SAR and FAA folks how they would use that data (for a VFR aircraft with no flight plan/no flight following) and how fast that data is available to SAR organizations.