Use of 121.5 ELTs to be illegal in U.S. in about 60 days.

Jim Logajan wrote:
wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:
Within 60 days of being published in the Federal Registry, use of
121.5 MHz ELTs will be forbidden by a re-write and re-title of
47 CFR section 87.195:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_publi...C-10-103A1.pdf

"The manufacture, importation, sale or use of 121.5 MHz ELTs is
prohibited."

The original text of 47 CFR section 87.195 may be read he

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-...E=47&PART=87&S
ECTION=195&YEAR=1998&TYPE=PDF

Two issues:
1) There are ELTs that support both 121.5 and 406 MHz, yet the
one-sentence regulation doesn't acknowledge their existence, so it
can be interpreted to mean their use too is prohibited.

2) There are going to be a lot of seriously annoyed and ****ed owners
of "older" equipment.

Yep, this was proposed in 2006 and nobody involved seemed to notice.

It looks like the aviation alphabet groups were caught unaware - at least
with the nearness of the effective date:

http://www.aopa.org/advocacy/article...100621elt.html

http://www.eaa.org/news/2010/2010-06-21_conflicting.asp

What most likely will happen is the FCC will go ahead with the ban on
the certification, manufacture, importation, or sale of such ELTs and
delay the ban on use to some future data, which will likely be the
same date the FAA eventually mandates everyone get a 406 MHz ELT.

I'm inclined to think they'll make no change.

I've already seen a distributer of ELTs say they were caught by surprise
too. You'd think they would be more astute to these things. I don't know if
121.5-only ELTs are still being sold or in sales pipelines (looks like it,
though,) but they would now only be useful as bricks even if "use" is still
allowed.

Given the brevity of the regulation and speed of implementation, the cynic
in me thinks someone in the FCC has a pecuniary interest in seeing the
price of 406 Mhz ELTs temporarily spike as demand outstrips available
supply.

Speed of implementation?

There is stuff in there proposed 1998 and the ELT stuff was proposed in
2006.

The bottom line is nobody in aviation was paying any attention to what
the FCC has been proposing to do for the past twelve years.



--
Jim Pennino

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