ISoar wrote:

Is a APRS (Automatic Postition Reporting System) enabled ham radio a
reasonable substitute?

Intro: http://nwaprs.org/downloads/WhatIsAPRS.pdf

Way more info: http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html


An experimentation was done in my club with a such system, not as
an emergency locator, but as a continuous position reporting
system, and the experimentation was susccesful. It could be better
than an emergency locator, since this last system, unless very resilient
and so expensive, may be destroyed in a crash, while a permanent
reporting system gives a last known position before the crash.
However the reason for which we didn't adopt this system for all
gliders in the club was the lack of available frequency. The both
way we tried it were both illegal, one of them was using the
radio of the glider on the airfield frequency, the other one was
using a couple of talkie-walkies, allowed only for ground to ground
transmission. See http://bipspevv.free.fr (sorry only in French).