Today is the day February 1st 2009

[JoeTomasone]

The unit in question was an Artex C406-1, which interestingly claims to be 50mw on the unit's label, 100mw in the product's brochure, and 200mw in the operation manual.   

Clarified this today with Artex.   They stated that the 100mw was nominal (full voltage), the 50mw was at EOL for the battery, and that the 200mw was a mistake. 

So in other words -- the 121.5 side is pretty much like any 121.5 ELT has ever been.   One nice new touch - this unit had a lithium battery pack, which will obviously run a lot longer at the maximum voltage.

[BigMojo]

On a somewhat related note, I silenced the last 121.5 ELT pre 1 FEB in FLWG.   

And I silenced one of the First Non-Sat Coverage 121.5s on 2 Feb.  (without the aid of an aircraft)

[Johnny Yuma]

There has been a lot of talk and speculation as to how the transition away from 121.5 monitoring by COSPAS/SARSAT will affect the search and rescue community.  Specifically we have talked about the possible affect on CAP who's bread and butter SAR mission is the tracking and deactivation of these beacons. 

I did not post this for people to speculate, or hypothesize  (we've done that).  I'm looking for first hand accounts as to how this transition is affecting you. 

Has the volume of missions changed?

Have you had to adapt your tactics??

if yes please explain.

KSWG ran 3 ELT missions the day after 121.5 SARSAT monitoring was turned off, all unregistered 406 units in the Wichita area.

There are too many unregistered ELTs and PLBs floating around, I don't see the Opstempo changing much. Cabela's is selling them at fire sale prices in the Bargain cave with no paperwork to register them.

[sardak]

Unfortunately, most of the ones we chase will be unregistered. In theory, if they're registered, a phone call or two to the phone numbers on the registrations should take care of it. Of course, planes are registered to corporations which are closed after hours, weekends, holidays, etc.

For the record, our wing has had one unregistered 406 beacon search since Feb. 1.  We had three in January.

The latest Sarsat package was launched Friday morning, February 6, from Vandenberg AFB onboard NOAA-19 (NOAA N-Prime). Everything appears to be operating normally. There is a 45 day system check-out before the satellite is declared operational.   
http://www.osd.noaa.gov/POES/noaa_n_prime.htm

Mike

[JoeTomasone]

Of course, planes are registered to corporations which are closed after hours, weekends, holidays, etc.

The registration asks for after-hours emergency contact data for that very reason.   Of course, over time, that data will grow stale due to personnel changes or sale of the aircraft without re-registration of the beacon - and that will likely generate more missions as well.

It would be interesting if AFRCC was keeping track of how many times they did NOT send us out due to properly registered 406 beacons that they were able to get silenced with a phone call.

[lordmonar]

Here's an intresting bobble.


According to the FCC all 406 ELT's must be registered.  If an unregistered ELT goes off.....we could be doing a criminal search as well as an emergency search.

Does Posse Commutadas (sp?) kick in?

[bosshawk]

Give that one to the lawyers.

[JoeTomasone]

Posse Commitatus would not apply since we are performing the SAR component, not the law enforcement component.   

[Major Carrales]

Posse Commitatus would not apply since we are performing the SAR component, not the law enforcement component.   

Agreed, ours is to find and save a life (if possible), after that...what there people do with the date we collect is beyond our scope of control.

One could say that an unregistered ELT constitutes a waste of resources or some sort of false alarm, but that is not for us to judge.