Hammerhead Directional Finder - 121.5/121.775

[Stonewall]

Has anyone seen, heard of, or more importantly, have any experience with this little guy?

Link to site where sold.

[SarDragon]

Looks interesting, but kind of spendy for a mission we don't do much of any more.

[Bayareaflyer 44]

It also appears to be specifically designed for a maritime environment.  While an interesting find, would not work very well for our land ops.  Under the FAQ on the mfr website, it has a section:

"Why can't the Hammerhead be used on land?

The Hammerhead is designed for vertically polarized signals, which is pretty much guaranteed if the beacon is on water. That is the antenna should be pointed up in the sky. When a beacon is on land, the antenna may be horizontal to the ground or even pointed upside down. In such situation, the directional indictor may not be valid.

The range can be severely limited due to non line-of-sight operation as hills or other obstacles can absorb the signal. In other cases when the signal is reflected, the direction may indicate the reflected direction not the actual beacon direction.

An advanced/expert user may be able to use the product on land, but due to the complexity and skill involved, the Hammerhead is not sold for direction finding on land."

That said - thank you sharing!

[Eclipse]

This again raise the question...

"How does a Federally-funded organizaiton with a life-safety mandate related to aviation,
not have standard equipment for performing that mission?"

[etodd]

This again raise the question...

"How does a Federally-funded organizaiton with a life-safety mandate related to aviation,
not have standard equipment for performing that mission?"

Airplane Becker gets the general location ... to send to the First Responders who have better ground gear. Team effort. LOL

[Eclipse]

Airplane Becker gets the general location ... to send to the First Responders who have better ground gear. Team effort. LOL

Then delete the ground SAR mission from the rhetoric and divert those resources, such
that they are, to DR.

The first step is identifying customers, the second is drafting doctrine.

Start today and you might have something actionable by 2025, with marketable capabilities by 2030.

[Stonewall]

Y'all could ruin a uniform thread.

[etodd]

Y'all could ruin a uniform thread.

Long live the polo!

[PHall]

Y'all could ruin a uniform thread.

Long live the polo!

Are you sick or something? You didn't include your normal lol.

[Fubar]

Airplane Becker gets the general location ... to send to the First Responders who have better ground gear. Team effort. LOL

NRAT uses RADAR and ADSB data to get the local public safety helicopter to the right spot in less than an hour from when the FAA calls. In nearly all those crashes there was no ELT activation.

[NIN]

Had an 121.5 only ELT mission last night.  We had picked up a Sniffer DF earlier this year to try out after consulting with Stonewall.   Unfortunately,  the DF wasn't at wing (across the street from the airport) so didn't get a chance to try it out "real world".

[Stonewall]

Had an 121.5 only ELT mission last night.  We had picked up a Sniffer DF earlier this year to try out after consulting with Stonewall.   Unfortunately,  the DF wasn't at wing (across the street from the airport) so didn't get a chance to try it out "real world".

But, how did you ever find the ELT? No way in hell you used a 35 year old $19 JetStream. No way in hell!

[NIN]

Hmmm. Let's see...  survey says.....

[PHall]

Jetstream + Body Mass = ELT Find. When you know it's on the airport this is just as fast or faster then a fancy DF unit.

[Eclipse]

Seriously. 

You get a non-distress in the middle of a conversation regarding the
fact that CAP doesn't get non-distresses any more?!?!

How hard did you have to kick that plane? 

[Stonewall]

Seriously. 

You get a non-distress in the middle of a conversation regarding the
fact that CAP doesn't get non-distresses any more?!?!

How hard did you have to kick that plane? 

Since I've been in my current wing for 3 1/2 years, we've had 12-15 ELTs. I've personally been ion 5, I think. My immediate AOR (group's area) has had 7-8 in the past 3 1/2 years. We've also been on an a/c crash site surveillance mission and a missing (deceased) person search.

If we would stop telling ourselves that we don't do lost person searches, trained for it, and marketed ourselves for it, we would be fairly active in GSAR as well.  My wing is adding sUAS teams as much as possible.

[NIN]

Seriously. 

You get a non-distress in the middle of a conversation regarding the
fact that CAP doesn't get non-distresses any more?!?!

How hard did you have to kick that plane? 

Oh, no, it gets better in the coincidental irony department: earlier in the day while discussing the Sniffer DF, I had remarked to Stonewall that my wing hasn't had an ELT mission since 2015. Then I realized I had sorted WMIRS wrong and it was really 2019. Solid SA and use of the interface there.

But still: We just don't get that many up here for some reason. (406mhz adoption?)

Wife and I were watching TV and one of my ES guys calls. I let it go to VM  (Household Six Actual gets a little annoyed at me with rando phone calls in the middle of The Great British Bake Off..) but thought it odd that he'd call at 8:15 on a Sunday night.  Then my Chief of Staff, also an IC, calls. "Uh oh, that means there's something going on. Paul Hollywood has to wait.."   Met my DO over at the local airport a half hour later where he had just located what he was pretty sure was the plane.  A couple of minutes of body-blocking with the Jetstream confirmed it.

That was fun. Last real-world 121.5 ELT I prosecuted was probably in the early 00s. There was no possibility of launching a plane last night, 1500ft OVC to 10,000ft & light snow, so ramp checks were going to be the thing to start with.

[PHall]

Seriously. 

You get a non-distress in the middle of a conversation regarding the
fact that CAP doesn't get non-distresses any more?!?!

How hard did you have to kick that plane? 

Oh, no, it gets better in the coincidental irony department: earlier in the day while discussing the Sniffer DF, I had remarked to Stonewall that my wing hasn't had an ELT mission since 2015. Then I realized I had sorted WMIRS wrong and it was really 2019. Solid SA and use of the interface there.

But still: We just don't get that many up here for some reason. (406mhz adoption?)

Wife and I were watching TV and one of my ES guys calls. I let it go to VM  (Household Six Actual gets a little annoyed at me with rando phone calls in the middle of The Great British Bake Off..) but thought it odd that he'd call at 8:15 on a Sunday night.  Then my Chief of Staff, also an IC, calls. "Uh oh, that means there's something going on. Paul Hollywood has to wait.."   Met my DO over at the local airport a half hour later where he had just located what he was pretty sure was the plane.  A couple of minutes of body-blocking with the Jetstream confirmed it.

That was fun. Last real-world 121.5 ELT I prosecuted was probably in the early 00s. There was no possibility of launching a plane last night, 1500ft OVC to 10,000ft & light snow, so ramp checks were going to be the thing to start with.

Aren't ELT's are about all you guys are allowed to do since Fish & Game pretty much has a lock on all of the Ground SAR missions in NH?

[JayCraswell]

Be sure your "Center" taking reports from aircraft aren't faxing ELT hits to the FAA (or anyone else but AFRCC)  You should be seeing more 121.5 Only missions if they were goofed up after it gets straightened out. I wonder if anyone else has done an informal servey on how many small aircraft owners still rely on 121.5 (only) ELTs. Its been a while but I had a lot of pilots tell me they just didn't want to pay what it costs to upgrade to 406. I still get a chuckle thinking about a mission a year ago?  The pilots who ELT went off was due to his wife trying to check the battery. She answered the door and threw up her hands "And the battery was expired and it still works?" then her husband says "OMG this... actually works??" 

As to who does SAR I still believe part of our job is to sit down with potential "customers" local PD, Fire and give them a short run down (sell them) on the things in the task manual ground team members train on (Bring copies and leave them if they show any interest) Line searching is a good topic. Telling them your people know not to pick up clues or other stupid stuff. And if its someone missing for unknown reasons its not very likely that a potential person that makes people go missing is going to volunteer to UN-help do the search.

Every wing has small town volunteer fire departments or one man Police departments (At least one I used to live in) And more searchers on scene quick makes for a more likely find of some kind.

If you get the chance talk about us not showing up uninvited. This I've learned is something they dread. Also us leaving the minute we are either no longer needed (or we screw something up and are unwanted), they should have no problems with public affairs because we normally defer to them. And if they do want us to talk will never speculate on anything. *At least that is how I learned it.  Tell them CAP has Chaplains (Big plus), pilots, and so on.  Tell them that we are insured so they don't have to worry about liability if one of us falls down a well. The cost (At least in my experience) has been zip zero nada. Add in that there are local units, ones from further out in the state and in a pinch you have other Wings (States) full of members if they have a need for lots of bodies or they need people over a long period of time.  Assuming the AFRCC guys give thumbs up to (Or it can sometimes be a Wing funded mission)  There might be a department assigned in a particular state to do a job but it doesn't preclude having extra bodies from CAP assist. Oh you might add that we have Aircraft and some units have recruited SARDOG handlers.  *They are really worth trying to enlist I think. Our wing has a procedure for seat belting a SARDOG and they like the fact that they don't get dumped and left which I'm told happens too often. One thing about CAP the mission is not closed until everyone is home! And our Comm is a lot better with an aircraft over the area then FRS or simplex VHF on SAR16. One told me that our younger ground team members were the only people they had ever worked with that could keep up so its a win win. And of course having those ground team members take care of comm and help with Land nav really appeals to most of them. Assuming of course that we know what we are doing.

And there is the last part. When you do a UBX maybe invite them to participate. Or ask them to do a talk about what they do? Let them work with your ground team, meet the people so its not asking "strangers" to help.

[heliodoc]

Re Living a thread


Any new newz on what real replacement for 121.5/406 units to replace L Per units

Maybe with all the new philanthropic money out there, maybe CAP could have a R$D test off of all the equipment and then make a standard unit like the LPer for what little search program we have left

OR

Re design the entire "SAR" curriculum on the ground side and establish Ground Teams to meet FEMA 508 standards and really start getting into the DR/ DA world but then recognizing CAP for those duties is not a Nationwide standard because the legwork really needs to be established to NHQ to get Nationwide buyin somewhat like Dr Bob Ditchs work at the MTT to re stablish creds it that world.

We all know the work of " all disasters are local" and the work it takes for the individual Wing, Sqdn, Unit Commander or ESOs to establish lines of commo to the EM world

NHQ could have solved this very problem yeeears ago by establishing a better more comprehensive program through the years of Civil Defense and maybe had had some for thought through the transition to FEMA and some Continuity of Operatons that FEMA and the EM world describe every day to the EM world