Backcountry Pilot

[PATRICK GARVEY offline]

I plan to fly floats in central BC this summer and a friend recommended a PLB which works off of the satellite system. Also any comments on Sat. phones and wireless internet systems would be appreciated...Garv

[ShamuPilot offline]

Checkout this thread. Lots of good info.

http://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=982

-Matt

[Prepared Pilot offline]

PLBs are a great piece of emergency gear. Nothing does what they do (summon help to your location in an emergency) as well or as reliably. Satellite phones are not as durable, waterproof, or as easy to use. My three year old could summon help with my PLB. PLBs cost less than Satellite phones and do not have any ongoing costs such as subscriptions. I reccomend getting one with a built in GPS.

That being said I would still like to have a Satellite phone in addition to my PLB. They can be used for many other things such as getting weather brieings and closing flight plans that a PLB can not. If you do get a Satellite phone I reccomend getting an Iridium one and not a Globalstar. Globalstar has been having serious issues with their satellites recently and are now very unreliable. I have a friend that had a medical emergency and could never get through the menu selections and to a person before the call was dropped. Luckily, someone else in the party had an Iridium phone.

I have a company that sells aviation survival gear and have offered all BCP members a discount on PLBs. Here is a link to the post with the details. I currently have both the AeroFix and MicroFix in stock.

[mtv offline]

Can be found cheaper at Puget Sound Inflatables site.

MTV

[Hammer offline]

Don't overestimate the prowess of your rescuers...unless you're on a flight plan an ELT signal will simply be reported to the law enforcement agency in the area of the blip. From this point on it's usually something of a tragic comedy, as most people know so little about general aviation that they don't even know what they're looking for. Best case senario they'll spend twenty minutes flying over the area doing a visual scan, and if you're unlucky enought to have crashed within ten miles of an airport they won't even do that... too many planes get parked with their ELT's bleeping away.

There was a crash recently here in the Tahoe area, which isn't very remote compared to BC! I don't know when the first ELT blips got picked up, but I think it was around 36 hours before serious measures were made to locate the source. Apparently they don't scramble CAP unless a flight plan has been filed, and most other agencies don't have the ability to hone in on an ELT signal. There was one survivor who was very lucky to be found at all.

One of the great things about the new system is it's supposed to have a lot fewer false alarms, thus prompting a quicker response. Add to it an exaxt location thanks to GPS and the average agency can actually go look for you in a productive manner.

With that in mind, and considering the vastness of BC, Id say the GPS feature is well worth the extra dockets. In fact, I'd say you wouldn't be going overboard to have one in the pocket of each person in the airplane. Of course it's easy to spend other people's money...

[Dean offline]

The importance of an ACCURATE flight plan can't be stressed enough in the efforts of S&R locating you quickly, especially when flying over remote tracts of wilderness. Back in 2000 a gentleman crashed his plane on a flight from my airport, Langley, to Chilliwack, BC. It's only about 25 miles, over terrain thats far from being considered remote yet his plane wasn't located until 17 months later.