banaari 27 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Rescuers wasted hours searching for an emergency beacon and eventually discovered it in a pile of rubbish at a Northland dump after it was incorrectly disposed of. (...) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advo ... d=11170625 Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 The old beacons should not be monitored and just ignored like they are around the rest of the World. People should know by now they are obsolete and are idiots if they expect to be rescued with one. Link to post Share on other sites
Steve Pope 243 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 they still use the old 121.5 frequency on the 406's. 406 gets them there 121.5 finds the actual spot. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 Yes but 121.5 is a very "Big" spot. It is for aircraft direction finding. I really do not think these old units should be kept just because they have a usable 121.5. The new units put a search team pretty darn close to the spot and the GPS units will put a search team right smack on the spot. Link to post Share on other sites
banaari 27 Posted December 11, 2013 Author Share Posted December 11, 2013 Still leaves me wondering what kind of bozo knows enough to upgrade their EPIRB but just tosses the old one in the garbage without deactivating first. Did/do the old versions carry any kind of identifying codes? Link to post Share on other sites
Steve_C 0 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 Is prolific, lots of them are ending up in tips. At least in Auckland the Coastguard planes RDF is state of the art and would have nailed the position of that beacon not long after take off. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 People will just be pissed off at chucking perfectly good gear away so it's unlikely they will take the effort to strip the battery out. I'm still carrying my 121 as commercial aircraft still monitor that frequency so if I start to go down I'll be flicking every switch on everything I have including the 121. As we have seen with so much electronic gear and systems, you have little to no idea if a lot of it is actually working at the time of need hence my theory of more the merrier. Link to post Share on other sites
Steve Pope 243 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 I also still carry my 121.5 for the same reasons as Knotme, the more strings to your bow, etc.. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 But the new units have 121 also. Link to post Share on other sites
Steve Pope 243 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 2 beacons better than one, or maybe the 406 failed for some reason. It might only be a mental crutch, especially if you are up where the local navies are out of diesel, but better than nothing, eh! Link to post Share on other sites
erice 732 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 like giving old cell phones to people who may need a hidden emergency 111 caller old epirbs should be able to find a better home than the tip sure many boaties could wouldn't buy a new one would be happy to have an old working one or their boat, or even as a spare hell, i'll pay postage if anyone is getting rid of an older model Link to post Share on other sites
Steve_C 0 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 There are still false alarms with beacons anyway, being tripped by accident, in a sense they are good in it allows crews practical experience in locating them, they get to listen to a real signal, with little information to go on. Link to post Share on other sites
erice 732 Posted December 12, 2013 Share Posted December 12, 2013 in the 80's i was an air force avionics tech at whenuapai in the main avionics repair section we had a special room for testing emergency locator beacons the room had a "faraday shield" built into the walls and a metal door, that sealed on to woven mesh, so during testing, the broadcast signal would not escape the room and falsely trigger rescue attempts it wasn't an especially difficult job and young techs were rotated through it pretty quickly as part of training and then 1 day base auckland got a call from search and rescue? in wellington? it seemed they were periodically getting brief, weak bursts of emergency beacon signal and had finally tracked down the coordinates to the whenuapai area could the air force check all its beacons on planes and liferafts etc as something wasn't right at the avionics section the commanding officer went down to the room to quiz the section sergeants and tech while they were getting the tech to show them his procedure 1 of the sergeants sees a transistor radio on the bench "what have you got that for, it won't work in here?" "it didn't at first, but once i ran this little antenna wire out the door and up the wall outside it did, pretty smart aye?" of course the wire inside the room acted as a beacon receive antenna, carried the signal outside the room and then acted as a broadcast antenna, completely negating the special room to keep the beacons signals contained for testing Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted December 12, 2013 Share Posted December 12, 2013 Haha, great story Link to post Share on other sites
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