I'm having a bad year with ELT's. Pulled a non-operable Ameri-king that came with my plane out and put a new ACK in.

A year later its not working. Just packed it off with an angry letter to the company. Correct me if I'm wrong but an ELT only needs to do two things well. Not break, and send out a signal in an emergency. Am I just having a string of bad luck or are there a bunch of crappy ELT's out there?

I find that I am a bit angry that a product that I bought new and is supposed to be relied on in an emergency can't last a year in a non-crashed airplane.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Am I just having a string of bad luck or are there a bunch of crappy ELT's out there?

My hangar partner just replaced an Ameri-King too.

The amazing thing is that now they want $900 for a 406 Mhz unit that is more complex and has even more things to break. What are the chances quality increased with price? I doubt it.

You are not the Lone Ranger with ELT experience. A study by the NTSB for the years 1983-1987 found that 75% of the time the ELT was not activated in a crash.

88% of these failures were due to damage in the crash, and the remaining 12% are due to maintenance/pilot error or manufacturing defects.

This does not count the huge number of false alarms.

So, it appears that elts are pretty much worthless. If you are warped enough to want to read the study, it can be found here:

ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19910001651_1991001651.pdf

tom