121.5/ 243 Illegal? Let's discuss how 406 MHz fits into all this

Started by Major Carrales, March 10, 2007, 05:16:31 AM

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DrDave

Sorry, I may be completely off base here, but isn't this entire discussion about SAR frequencies on a public forum violating OPSEC?

Just curious.  Correct me if I'm wrong (no flames please! <grin>).
Lt. Col. (Dr.) David A. Miller
Director of Public Affairs
Missouri Wing
NCR-MO-098

"You'll feel a slight pressure ..."

MIKE

Mike Johnston

RiverAux

Seeing as how ALL of our SAR training materials and policies are available without restriction from the CAP NHQ web site, there isn't much we could give away here...

wingnut

you got to be kidding me OPSEC over ELT frequencies, ARE YOU A PILOT? No . . . ok your making me talk to my self

>:D
sorry was that too much flame??? :angel:

DNall

Quote from: 2nd LT Fairchild on March 11, 2007, 11:22:57 AM
Actually DHS does more than LE, remember other departments have been rolled under it, thus some of the cluster %&^ that occured during Katrina.

Check out their site to get an idea
http://www.dhs.gov/xprepresp/programs/
Hype verus reality. It's a bunch of LE agencies rolled together & sharing resources now to do the same LE missions they always did. Look at the resource deployments & such, not to mention the campaign you see to conenct drugs w/ terrorism. It's all budget hype. They got no one flying the border to prevent terrorist coming across with bombs, that's 1AF.

QuoteI agree with most of what has been said here.  Technology is going to change the way things are done.  However, like most, we need to adapt to the changes or die.

Disaster releif/ recovery should become the bigboy in our portfolio.  Aerial surveys of disaster areas, rebuilding/ clean up, etc... (Smaller S&R will probably still be around but good point who wants to train to call out but a small bit.)
Just a word of caution that disaster relief belongs to Army, and they got that well covered. The overall air response (mil & civilian) is run by 1AF... So, the best way to get ground teams involved is as part of an organic air/grd/CnC task force to do first in assessment. At that point you have your foot in the door & have made an early first impression with the highest level officials involved in the event, which puts you in place to follow on with additional personnel.

QuoteThe thing is CAP needs is to expand their portfolio, ADVERTISE those things if it is to be called and used.

The summer of 06 their was major flooding in this area of NY, deaths were attributed. The damage was incredible.  We are still recovering from it. Since I was just moving up to the area I do not know what capacity local CAP contributed.  I am working on finding out. My hunch is limited to none, that is sad.

Even if CAP is not called out during the actual event, why not assist in the recovery?  CAdets could easily be invloved in that.  This is a way to get the CAP name out as well as the other missions it performs.  Look at some of the press after Katrina/ Rita.. limited, but good..  We need more of that on the smaller community level too.

I can say the recent SAREX I was in, there were no local cadets invloved, just ones from other squad'ns.  Actually there were many more seniors than cadets.

The main point is... CHange or die.

Hurricaine season is just a few months away now.  Focus on training for that on all ends, send out press releases, letters to LE, etc.

The main thing is, what can we do NOW, what training can be done that is still within our current mandate that can be expanded, modified to the current/ upcoming climate of change for CAP?
PR no-doubt is a big thing thru which we can maximize the opportunities we can address. Absolutely you should be cognizant of it & addressing it at every turn. At the same time, our capabilities & reputation are lacking. We need to professionalize our cuture so people take this seriously as though they were professional resucers, cause they's what they are supposed to be, just w/o the paycheck. We need to work on our quality control & training standards to gain greater standing with our parent & outside orgs, as well as greater capability to carry out complex missions. And, we need to address the technology package we are deploying. We got all these nice efficient platforms to put over target areas, and very little more than a set of eyes to carry. That's not very useful in most situations.

Nick

I would not tag the collective DHS as a bunch of LE agencies rolled together.




Law Enforcement Agencies
Transportation Security Administration
US Customs and Border Protection
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
US Coast Guard
US Secret Service

Non-Law Enforcement Agencies
National Communications System
National Cyber Security Division
US Fire Administration
Office of National Capital Region Coordination
Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Directorate for Science and Technology
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Office of Operations Coordination
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office
US Citizenship and Immigration Services

Now granted a few of the non-LE entities have a limited LE function (such as the FEMA Inspector General), but in general DHS fulfills a bigger picture than just a bunch of LE agencies rolled together.
Nicholas McLarty, Lt Col, CAP
Texas Wing Staff Guy
National Cadet Team Guy Emeritus

DNall

That's a little misleading. Some of those aren't full stand alone agencies. Sci/Tech for instance mimics the same division under CIA. Same with Ops coordination, NatCapReg, Cyber, etc. those are support directorates. Immigration, that's a regulatory agency that's fed by CBP & ICE. Some of the others were stand alones that got whipped in & hadn't changed at all. Like Fire Admin for instance, great org, but they don't have anything to do with homeland security.

I'm not saying they don't do any HLS & it's all LE... what I'm saying is there's a lot of confusion & most of the missions people would like to do for them are actually 1AF jobs, not DHS. If they have missions they want us to fly, then they can & do ask 1AF for that help. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a great partnership to be had with DHS providing us some toys to fly around, particularly for radmon, but ultimately it is best done thru AF.

Hartley

Hi Guys,

  Back to the original question area..

  The 406 ELT/EPIRB does have a 50 mW 121.5 transmitter for "last mile" homing.  Not all (or even most) 406 units have an active GPS onboard, so they may transmit no info, or the info may be old (as in the last position the onboard GPS sent to it).  This is probably more important with regard to Marine units, which might be drifting, than a crashed aircraft on land.  While they are not going to "alert" on 121.5 mHz signals after the cutoff, they will certainly still use the SARSAT assets to monitor and track these signals when a "missing aircraft/vessel" situation occurs - those satellites will be up there for a long time to come!

  SAR frequencies, including our VHF-AM channels (122.9 & 123.1), Marine channels (6,16,21A,22A,82A, 83A, 2182 kHz, etc) and the NTIA -designated interoperability channels are all "Public Record", and are NOT FOUO like CAP's internal VHF & HF frequency set.

  The AFRCC/USCG gets it's info on the owner/operator of the 406 unit via the registration process - the forms involved are mostly "How do we get hold of you - who might know where you are?" questions.. and they are very easy to complete and submit.  Their primary concern is being able to ID and contact the owner or someone who can tell them if the unit might be in distress.  Part of the reason for this is that they will get an IMMEDIATE notice of the activation of a unit via the receivers on the geostationary satellites, but may not get a good location fix (from the LEO sats) for some time - they are willing to launch assets into the general area of a verified (or strongly suspected) distress activation even before they have a specific location.  In the Marine world, there have been several reports of CG aircraft launched within minutes of a 406 activation that the USCG believed was a true distress situation - and all they had at the time was a "somewhere between San Diego and Cabo San Lucas" location.

73 DE Hartley
 

DNall

Yes, but the 406 does ID the tail number, and from it the owner & his contact info, which in turn gets them called &  on the way to scilence the non-distress signal...

The point being w/o the volume of non-distress activity our ground & air crews will not have adequate work under current circumstances to keep up their skills, and there will not be an adequate mission load to justify our current funding levels.

All of which requires branching out, which in turn brings on a debate about if that branching should be toward AF & DoD or other federal agency missions, which is our primary purpose as an org but may require serious change, or if we should focus on state/local, which can be warm & fuzzy but doesn't & never will pay the bills.

Posting known info like this thread, or about current NIMS compliance standard, or NIMS FPIS-201 ID standards for credentialling... and about draft info like the credentialing standards for SaR... all of that is meant to educate people to the reality of a changing world that we need to start adapting to - comm is the only place we're remotely up to speed on.

lordmonar

Also 406 will get you a position to withing 2km vice the 20km of 121.5.  With GPS it will get you withing 100m!

Also the 406 only requires 5 minutes to get a fix as opposed to 45 minutes for 121.5...so even if your target was moving you can get a more up to date fix on it.

All around the 406 is a much better system.

Also when you got the COMPAS web site...they are saying they are turning off the 121.5 system on 1 Feb 2009.....so that looks like the hard date for the FAA to get off their butts unless there is someone else monitoring the signals.
PATRICK M. HARRIS, SMSgt, CAP

sardak

The FAA is not going to get off its collective butt.

The FAA can't just start telling aircraft owners to change their ELTs to 406 MHz beacons.  That requires a change to federal law (14CFR91.207).   The Coast Guard got the law changed and started the EPIRB transition in 2003 giving mariners three years to comply.  This allowed a two year grace period (2007-08) before Sarsat stops listening, thus giving the USCG time to make sure "everyone" is converted (there will always be those who don't comply). 

The last major changes to ELT requirements for general aviation took the FAA five years to get through the process.

The FAA isn't going to get the law changed before 2009 not just because of time, but because FAA won't even try.  Why would it try to change at the 11th hour when it's had six years since termination was announced?  And of course 2008 is an election year.  The aviation community has been opposed to another ELT change.  Here is the Aircraft Owners' and Pilots' Association (AOPA) position:

"AOPA opposes any attempt to mandate or otherwise require the replacement of existing 121.5/243-MHz ELTs with 406-MHz units."
   http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/regulatory/elt.html

If one reads the history of this issue, in 1992 the US recommended to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) the use of 406 ELTs.  The NTSB and other groups recommended to the FAA that the mandatory transition to 406 ELTs begin in 1994, but the FAA was opposed.  So now it's 2007, Sarsat monitoring of 121.5/243 stops in two years, and 406 MHz ELTs still aren't required in the US.

Some of the opposition to making 406 MHz ELTs mandatory has to do with cost.  $1000 for an approved aviation 406 MHz ELT is at the rock bottom. Cessna's site shows that a new 182 comes with a 121.5/406 beacon with no GPS capability, which one can find on the Internet for about $1000.  The factory upgrade to a 121.5/243/406 ELT connected to the aircraft GPS is $7195!!  I found the same model on the Internet for $4650, uninstalled.  There are less expensive ones, too.

While both the FAA and AOPA are opposed to mandatory requirements, both organizations encourage owners to equip aircraft with 406 MHz ELTs.  Failing that, the two groups suggest pilots carry PLBs to gain the advantage of the 406 beacons at a much lower cost ($600 or so) while still having the FAA required 121.5 MHz ELT in the aircraft.

But the FAA is already thinking to the future, this is section 6-2-5 of the FAA Airman's Information Manual:
To ensure adequate monitoring of these frequencies [121/5/243.0] and timely alerts after 2009, all airborne pilots should periodically monitor these frequencies to try and detect an activated 121.5/243.0 MHz ELT.

Mike

Tubacap

My question is, after 2009, is the only way to find out if a plane went down with the 121.5 system an overdue status?  If so, it seems that we may find ourselves in more protracted missions lasting longer.  A few years ago we did a GTE with USAF where they had us plot out every airport from NJ through the center of PA.  I think we calculated it would take about a day of calling to check everything all the airports to see if the plane had landed. 

Without at least a decent SARSAT hit, could this be a more realistic view of what a distress or non-distress ELT search would be like?
William Schlosser, Major CAP
NER-PA-001

lordmonar

Generaly I like the AOPA....but this position statment is just assinine!

We don't want to change, even if no one is listening!

They sound like a bunch of 5 year olds....

PATRICK M. HARRIS, SMSgt, CAP

DNall

Quote from: lordmonar on March 15, 2007, 04:09:30 AM
Generaly I like the AOPA....but this position statment is just assinine!

We don't want to change, even if no one is listening!

They sound like a bunch of 5 year olds....
They're looking out for their member's desires, and their desire to keep them members, you can't blame them for that. That doesn't mean they & most people aren't more flexible when it doesn't saound so much like them taking a hit in the pocketbook.

Honestly I think the prices will continue to go down on teh units as they become more universal. When your batter expires after 2009 & you're in for an annual or something, I'm pretty confident it'll get switched out at that point. Personally I think it's irresponsible of the FAA to allow a gap in coverage like this. They shlould have used the lead time to get people switched, and/or maintain alerting from the old system while they buy that time.

lordmonar

Again I agree with you....it is irresponsible to wait this long to do anything.

Talk about being out of the ELT buisness.  If the 406's are not required on all aircraft (they are required on comercial aircraft) then once SARSAT is switched off, we are almost out of a job completly. Sure the 121's will still be required....but who's listening?
PATRICK M. HARRIS, SMSgt, CAP

sardak

We go back to the pre-satellite days.  Overflying aircraft will be the primary source, but the mission count definitely goes down.   High flyer ELT reports without Sarsat hits are the missions where the ICs earn their pay and lose their sleep.  I know.

Pilots will also need to be encouraged to file flight plans, use flight following and/or make more pilot reports, to increase their chances of being noticed sooner in case of a problem.

Note that a certain organization has been noticeably quiet on promoting the need for aviation to switch to 406.  I think I know why, but I'm not pleased with the reasons.

Mike

Major Carrales

The superfluous missions may go down, but the the need will still be there.

Honestly, I would rather be raised at 0300 hrs by a real "Paul Revere" to find a "fellow aviator" than to have to deal with irrate aircraft owners at Cualquiera Co. Airport who's ELT went off.

Rest assured, we will not be out of the ELT business with 406, we will merely be in a better world.  A more accurate world with less wasted time and a greater opportunity to assist.

"We have been given the power to change CAP, let's keep the momentum going!"

Major Joe Ely "Sparky" Carrales, CAP
Commander
Coastal Bend Cadet Squadron
SWR-TX-454

DNall

The thing is though if they have a location within a mile or two they aren't calling you with your hour plus response time. They're calling the cops to drive around looking for a mess.

You'll still get some calls. 406 goes off on airport, AF calls the numbers provided by the guy, but he's gone on a cruise & not answering the phone or the door when the cops show up. So you'll get called to find & silence it. It's so many fewer missions though that our capability & cost effectiveness will drop off considerablly. Plus we won't have that 95% of inland-ASAR number to toss around as our bread & butter.

If really want to do something, start looking into getting the new 406 DFs for the planes that the CG is installing now.



Major Carrales

Quote from: DNall on March 15, 2007, 05:26:36 PM
The thing is though if they have a location within a mile or two they aren't calling you with your hour plus response time. They're calling the cops to drive around looking for a mess.

The Cops?  I don't think the police have the time to be doing our job. 

In anycase, lets just see what happens.
"We have been given the power to change CAP, let's keep the momentum going!"

Major Joe Ely "Sparky" Carrales, CAP
Commander
Coastal Bend Cadet Squadron
SWR-TX-454

lordmonar

Quote from: Major Carrales on March 15, 2007, 05:08:40 PMRest assured, we will not be out of the ELT business with 406, we will merely be in a better world.  A more accurate world with less wasted time and a greater opportunity to assist.

My point is that there is not going to be a 406 world.  If the FAA does not mandate them, who is going to spend the $1K-$1.5K for them?

I agree that if/when the FAA gets around to mandating them...we will be in a much better world (especially if they mandate the GPS option as well!)...but if they do not by 1 Feb 2009 we will be in a much worse world.  Now will be tracking lost planes with only the flight plan to go off of.  Which means AFRCC is not going to get the first notificaiton 45 minutes after the crash but maybe 2 hours after the pilots fails to close out his flight plan.  An istead of having a 20km radius to search we will have to search the entire flight plan from last radio/radar contact.  It will be like the 1970's all over again!
PATRICK M. HARRIS, SMSgt, CAP