"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
The question at hand is whether the new transponders will really reduce
the need for S&R? It may reduce the search time somewhat, but it won't do
much to eliminate the rescue operations.

It may be all hype, but I thought the new 406 mhz ELTs were designed
to report your position in Lat/Lon, like a GPS? If that's the case,
the "Search" part of a SAR mission has been entirely eliminated.

I doubt that. Just look at the search for Steve Fossett - no trace of an
ELT - even the one on his wrist.


I also thought these things were being touted as all-but-eliminating
false signals? Sadly, false alarms made up the vast majority of our
CAP SAR missions, so a huge percentage of CAP SAR will be eliminated
if this feature is truly functional.

Eliminating false alarms won't eliminate the real alarms...


Anyway, with no one listening to 121.5, I suspect most pilots will be
switching to 406s when their current batteries die. If everyone
switches, this will be a great enhancement to safety, but it *sounds*
like 90% of CAP's purpose (outside of educational -- which means we're
back to "Boy Scouts Without a Mission") will be eliminated.

What about the "no ELT functioning" cases? Those won't get any easier.
(Again, look at what was done for Steve Fossett with no results)

One thing they could do is to add a hi-res digital camera to the aircraft
and do photo-recon while running the search grids. Something like the
MechanicalTurk work that was done for Fossett could easily turn up something
that was missed by the human observer who happened to get distracted or
sneeze at the wrong time...

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
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