Mark James Boyd wrote:
Tim Mara wrote:

Personal ELT's and EPIRB units require you to activate them manually....if
you're still, after you crash.... able to!


I've activated my ELT not after, but BEFORE any potential
unwitnessed landing. At pattern altitude for an off-field
landing, I've always considered this an emergency. So I pop it
on. If I land safely and happily, I shut it off.

You mentioned this before, and it made me wonder.

When I bought mine there were lots of cautions in the instructions
about _not_ activating it unless it was really an emergency.

I have to admit I don't know exactly what the consequences of
activating it will be in the short term. I thought that the result
would be pretty immediate alarm bells souding in cockpits of
overhead jets listening in 121.5.

If I knew that as I approached an outlanding and activated my ELT
I'd be sending every overhead jet crew into an emergency response mode,
I would not like to do that at all. One could almost say "downright
irresponsible". Every weekend day there are people making outlandings
all over the country!

Every XC flight I make I am prepared to and expect to outland. That
is part of what XC flying is about (in a country where you don't plan
to XC from airport to airport, at least)

It would not be fair to carry the expectation that therefore I am prepared to
disturb flight crews every weekend just in case I botch an outlanding...

.... so how do you reconcile this in your mind?

Martin.