Eric Greenwell wrote in message ...
Ed Byars said he has had two successful 121.5 style ELT activations; I
know a pilot in our club that had a successful activation (the police
were alerted and arrived in short while). So the scorecard is:

3 Successful activations
? Unsuccessful activations

I don't know of any other cases. This is a very unscientific poll, but
perhaps others can report their experiences in actual crashes, which
might give us a better idea of their value.

Eric,

My ELT in an ASW-24 activated and transmitted well after a gear-up
landing in Uvalde. The glider was taken to someone's house for repair
and fuselage was turned over to work on the belly. I had forgotten to
de-arm the unit. At around 1AM the Civil Air Patrol people got the
person doing the repairs out of bed. They told him very politely that
he may not be aware of it but there appears to be a crashed airplane
in his backyard.
There was no fine, no fuss about the incident. The ELT had
transmitted through the bottom of the glider (ELT installed in one of
the tubes where the thermos bottles used to reside)with the stock
antenna stowed horizontally in another tube. Time from activation to
rescue people showing up: around 4-6 hours, not bad considering there
was no missing pilot report.

Herbert, J7