Glider crash at Moriarty

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 1:56:44 PM UTC-4, danlj wrote:

406-mHz ELT or PLB: location accuracy 100 meters
ELT cost: $650+

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...406compact.php $943

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 4:26:59 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 1:56:44 PM UTC-4, danlj wrote:

406-mHz ELT or PLB: location accuracy 100 meters
ELT cost: $650+

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...406compact.php $943

I am pretty sure Fossett had an ELT. Imagine how quickly he could have been found with a Spot.
And I am even more sure that MH370 had an ELT...
ELT/PLBs are good addition to Spot/Inreach. But it will be totally silly to invest in those instead of Spot/Inreach.

Ramy

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 7:26:59 PM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 1:56:44 PM UTC-4, danlj wrote:

406-mHz ELT or PLB: location accuracy 100 meters
ELT cost: $650+

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...406compact.php $943


A full compliment of ELT, PLB, InReach etc.. would keep the SAR costs down (aside from the fact of finding you sooner). Has anyone ever gotten a bill for a soaring related SAR?

http://www.backpacker.com/news-and-e...ic-obligation/

On Wed, 10 Jun 2015 10:32:16 -0700, mark.lenox wrote:

Robert's point is very good. No matter what the naysayers say, having
a chance is better than having no chance, which is exactly what you have
if you don't have a good 406MHz ELT onboard.

I fly with a conventional transponder, a 406 MHz PLB with GPS, and SPOT.
And according to you, that gives me "no chance". I don't suppose you're
prone to wild exaggeration, are you?

The SPOT in this case unfortunately didn't perform well, but still
narrowed the search down to a few square miles. Mine works a lot better
than that. In a survivable crash, the odds are quite good that a SPOT or
InReach will survive also.




A SPOT is a good idea in addition to an ELT, but shouldn't be considered
a primary emergency device in my opinion. SPOT is for realtime
tracking when some inaccuracy is acceptable, no more, no less.

If I bail out, the SPOT is going to give extremely precise info on where
I land. Your ELT, if it survives and activates, is going to end up with
the wreckage. Which one do you think is going to give more accurate
information for recovering me?



The expectation that S&R can find you immediately without accurate
positioning information is misplaced.

In any case, someone getting to you quickly isn't going to happen, at
least where I fly. It is silly, in this day and age, not to have a GPS
sending data up to satellites. There's different ways of doing that,
they have their strengths and weaknesses. ELT's are fine, but they're
not the only solution as you seem to so strongly feel. Nothing is
perfect, and ELT's have certainly had their share of failures.

SPOT Gen3 can give 2 1/2 minute tracking, InReach can give 2 minutes if
you pay for it. Having a trail like that recorded before the crash can
be invaluable if the worst happens. In a mild crash, I'd certainly
rather have the messaging capability to direct the crew, rather than the
all or nothing signal from an ELT.

-Dave

Some back country areas are published that cost of SAR are at the individuals expense.
Especially during the "off season" such as the middle of winter.
Some "back country permits" are not issued without a SAR plan published and in place.
That fits more the hiker and not the flyer, unless you are flying into very remote areas, off season.

BillT

ELT measured effectiveness is less than 50% (they say 40-60%, why not be more specific?). If you are injured it may be higher because the damage is less, but not necessarily. 50% amounts "better than nothing", but not much more.

I tried inReach, only to switch back to Spot2 after spending over an hour on the phone with DeLorme to suspend service. They wanted me to do it thru the inreach so I wouldn't inadvertently cancel service, even tho I was on the phone with them!

Yeah, you could carry a Spot, Inreach, PLB, ELT, sat phone, cell phone, HAM radio, flare gun, etc., ALL ON YOUR PARACHUTE! After awhile one must reflect on how much protection you can stand. If that isn't enough maybe you should stay on the ground and go back to watching Gilligan's Island on TV.

Tom

On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 11:20:52 PM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
ELT measured effectiveness is less than 50% (they say 40-60%, why not be more specific?). If you are injured it may be higher because the damage is less, but not necessarily. 50% amounts "better than nothing", but not much more.

I tried inReach, only to switch back to Spot2 after spending over an hour on the phone with DeLorme to suspend service. They wanted me to do it thru the inreach so I wouldn't inadvertently cancel service, even tho I was on the phone with them!

Yeah, you could carry a Spot, Inreach, PLB, ELT, sat phone, cell phone, HAM radio, flare gun, etc., ALL ON YOUR PARACHUTE! After awhile one must reflect on how much protection you can stand. If that isn't enough maybe you should stay on the ground and go back to watching Gilligan's Island on TV.

Tom

The whole ELT concept seemed wrong from the beginning. Only someone who had never seen a crash site (Congress) would expect a wrecked aircraft to transmit it's location.

Far better for the undamaged aircraft to send location data just before it crashes using a tracker.

The whole ELT concept seemed wrong from the beginning. Only someone who
ha=
d never seen a crash site (Congress) would expect a wrecked aircraft to
tra=
nsmit it's location.

Far better for the undamaged aircraft to send location data just before
it
=
crashes using a tracker.


Has anyone installed a flarm tracker in the us yet? Works pretty well in
Europe

http://live.glidernet.org

On Tue, 09 Jun 2015 11:40:58 +0000, David Kinsell wrote:

On Mon, 08 Jun 2015 17:37:26 -0700, cliffhilty wrote:

I am saddened for our loss of Joe, I met him a few years ago as a
scorer at a SCOH contest, very nice gentleman.

As for spot vs Delorme or other means of location ID, I have an
original Spot and it has great reception on my parachute left shoulder.
Cost is my main reason for not changing.

I still use a Spot Connect on the parachute strap, it seems reliable in
transmitting points. If there's an option for faster than 10 minute
resolution, I haven't found it. Unfortunately, to turn on tracking, you
need data on your phone, which occasionally is quite inconvenient.
Stupid design. Probably time to upgrade to something better.

To update this, their phone app has now been changed so that internet is
no longer required on the phone to use the app. After changing info like
contact lists on the website, you're prompted to sync that info with the
phone. But in the field, no internet is now needed.

The faster than 10 minute tracking is available on their newest (Gen3)
hardware, but not older units. However, hitting the SOS button does give
5 minute updates. I hope it initiates a transmission as soon as the
button is pressed.

-Dave

Condolences to Joe's family. It is always grim to hear these reports.

As a Civil Air Patrol pilot, I think I'll weigh in on the search and rescue question. I have been the pilot on two real searches by the Douglas County squadron and participated (not as a CAP pilot, but in a private capacity) in the Steve Fossett search, and I have flown some half dozen S&R exercises as a CAP Mission Pilot. Perhaps my experience will be instructive to fellow glider pilots.

First, CAP is a volunteer organization. When we are called by the local sheriff we try to respond, but it is not always possible to field a team. And we do work as a team. We do not send an individual pilot out to do a search. He is accompanied by two trained observers who can help him operate the GPS so he flies an efficient search (covers the ground completely without overlaps or gaps) and have eyes on the ground as he flies the airplane. And the three people in the plane are not the only members of the team -- there is also an Incident Commander and radio operator, at a bare minimum, to keep track of the search team's flight to help them get a ground team in place quickly if they need one and so on. So it is not a small effort, but it is well planned and staffed, not just some pilot droning over uncharted desert without a clue of where he should be looking.

Secondly, we have well designed search patterns that are programmed into our GPS so we can cover ground thoroughly but without repeating unnecessarily.. To start a search, though, we need to have a sense of where to look. It would be pointless to say "well I think Joe was headed southeast, so just head out that way and see if you see anything." Instead, we try to have a fix on the last known contact -- by SPOT or radar, whatever -- and to design a search based on that fix. If we have some reason to believe the plane we are searching for was last heard from at a given point and was heading south from there, we can perform a line search. If we have no sense of the direction of travel, we can perform an expanding square search from the last known point. And if the terrain is hilly, we can perform a contour search around the area of last contact. IOW, we have good search tools to put into use, but without knowing where to begin it's a huge task for one or two small planes. Oh, and BTW, when we send a plane into a search grid (we divide the US up into "grids" of a quarter section each) we don't assign another plane to the same grid until the first one has reported out of the grid.. There is little to be gained by having two planes in the same block of air, trying to fly a careful pattern but looking out to avoid another plane in the same bit of sky.

So what we really need is a fix on the last known location. I have tracked glider pilots using SPOT, and know the technology has a bad habit of dropping one and sometimes two ten-minute reports. That means a fix from a SPOT tracker could be 10-20 miles away from where we think it stopped. That's a huge error when you're searching blocks of ground that are 5 by 15 miles -- the debris field might be three grids away very easily. So we try to have a pretty decent LKP (last known position) before we launch.

On the Fossett search no one knew which direction he departed or where he intended to go. Since the Hilton Ranch is at the foot of Mt. Grant, just over the hill from Hawthorne and Walker Lake, the search concentrated at first on Mt. Grant. For two days aircraft covered every square inch (and I mean that quite literally -- I looked at the combined GPS tracks of the search aircraft and there was no white space between ground tracks) of Mt. Grant without seeing anything. Since the Citabria he was flying held 4 hours' fuel, we then expanded the search to cover as much territory as we could inside a circle defined by 240 minutes of flight. That was a huge area and there were a lot of gaps in the ground coverage. And when the wreckage was finally found two years later we understood just how difficult our search really was -- the tube-and-fabric plane had crumpled so the largest piece was the engine -- something you could fit in the trunk of most modern cars. If we had known exactly where his A/C impacted the ground it is entirely possible we never would have seen it from 1,000' in the air. I've looked at a wrecked glider from 300' in the air -- a wreck where the wings detached but remained intact -- and it was not easy to spot. Steve's Citabria was vastly smaller.

I hope this gives some perspective on just how hard it is to search from a moving A/C.

Fred