I was working on my plane this evening and heard an ELT on the radio, very strong signal, I could hear it in the backgound on my radio from 121.0-122.0. I didn't have any phone numbers with me so I called the canyon county 911 no., they said "we don't deal with airplane crashes, call the FAA" and gave me the number for the dial-in line to the local AWOS station. I called Lockheed Martin FSS, they hadn't heard of it yet but said they would get the local S&R started. It was still going off at 7:30 pm local time. If it turns out to be an actual crash I'll post more.

Did you turn your ELT off just to be sure...

Probably a false alarm but I'm angered about the lack of response from 911. What if you were a non-pilot (God forbid ) how would you know who to call?

Maybe I should spring for a GPS enabled ELT after all....

Mountain Doctor wrote:Probably a false alarm but I'm angered about the lack of response from 911. What if you were a non-pilot (God forbid ) how would you know who to call?

Maybe I should spring for a GPS enabled ELT after all....

How would a non pilot here it.

Tim

Still, a 911 operator ought to know better. While we all know that older 121.5/243.0 ELTs have a dismal false alarm rate, still it's a potential emergency. That's like telling a 911 caller who doesn't know the address of the emergency to hang up, and call back when they have the address.

On getting a 406, though, that's a good idea no matter what. I have one of the first Artex ME406s after they were approved in my airplane, tied to my GPS, plus I have 2 406 PLBs. If I go down, I want to be found!

Cary

qmdv wrote:

Mountain Doctor wrote:Probably a false alarm but I'm angered about the lack of response from 911. What if you were a non-pilot (God forbid ) how would you know who to call?

Maybe I should spring for a GPS enabled ELT after all....

How would a non pilot here it.

Tim

Valid point...

If you don't want to spring for a 406 elt, at least buy a spot. Its a lot of bang for your buck and it will probably work better than a regular elt in the bc.

The airport manager found it later that night, it was a C-152 parked on the ramp. And yes, the FIRST thing I did when I heard it was check my own ELT to make sure it wasn't me.

I rented a beat up 172 out of Hayward, CA last March for a local trip while in SF for a conference.

Nice flying tired old plane. Made a greaser landing, and when the nose touched on rollout it shimmied like a sumbeech.

Full aft pressure on the yoke would not stop it.

I had a hard time hearing Ground frequency over the ELT.

Very embarrassing especially since it really was a smooth landing!

I wonder if that's what happened to that Cessna on the ramp and pilot did not realize it triggered the ELT.

I had a landing once that wasn't very rough at all and it triggered the ELT. I've also had some harder landings in training that I was suprised didn't trip the ELT. But yeah I could hear it bleed through on other frequencies so it was pretty obvious.

In my case the wiggle was side to side rather than up and down. Maybe that triggers it easier?

Like when we were kids certain pinball machines you could shake front/back or side to side without tilting, but only one axis.

Aircraft late? Worried?

Idaho State Communications (800-632-8000)

Put it in your phone.

Had a Grumman Yankee wreck on the field a few months back... Was bad enough to rip the right wing off the airplane and spun it around a few times, wound up backwards in the sage brush... ELT is in the tail of those things and hard to get too without removing panels... I checked with my hand held to make sure it was not going off... No signal even as violent as it was.... A full two weeks went by and my dad was out flying the Pacer and heard an ELT signal... Funny thing is it was only directly above and directly to the west and east of where I moved the wreck too in between two metal buildings.... Turned on the hand held again and sure enough the ELT in that Grumman was blairing... Have no idea how long it was going but could have been just a few hours to maybe a couple of days but the weird thing is the fact that it took two weeks before it went off...

Brian