Practice ELT Beacon: Licensing

[Brad]

^^^Brad, Thanks for the long post, which contains the answer, but your last statement is irrelevant.

So it comes down to is it a SAR organization with a definite aviation mission, or a general SAR group that a lot of county fire/ems agencies have?

Practice beacons are licensed as "ELT test stations" as posted earlier in the thread. This organization holds such a license from the FCC on 121.6. The Pointer test beacons sold today are on 121.775. This is not an authorized frequency by the FCC for "ELT test stations," as discussed in the thread. This group was curious how CAP licenses its practice beacons on this frequency.

The answer is that CAP doesn't. Here is the key sentence in your post, from Malcom Kyser: "It is true that we are only authorized ELT wavering tone (3K20A3X) on 121.775 but this is per our NTIA frequency assignment, not the FCC or the FAA." per the J/F-12 number issued for the Pointer 6000.

So, this organization will not be able to license a practice beacon on 121.775. It will have to use one of CAP's with CAP involved in the training or exercise. It can however, legally continue to use its 121.6 beacon(s).

Mike

I was actually looking moreso at 87.323.c:

(c) The frequency 122.775 MHz and, secondary to aeronautical multicom stations, the frequency 122.850 MHz are available for assignment to aviation support stations. These frequencies may be used for communications between aviation service organizations and aircraft in the airport area. These frequencies must not be used for air traffic control purposes or to transmit information pertaining to runway, wind or weather conditions.

Hence my reference to the part e (life safety) definition of an aviation support station.

The best advice? Have the non-CAP SAR agency's communications guy contact his/her local FCC field office.