Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zancarius | Hacker News Reader

Your comment reminded me of a video I saw on Youtube which highlights the utility of having a reliable beacon for rescue services to track your location:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTiGU5TiYCE

They were flying a Cessna 170B into a remote part of Alaska in August 1989 when they encountered an engine failure. They survived, and the plane was recovered shortly thereafter (performing an engine swap in the field no less!), but I think it illustrates pretty well the sorts of circumstances where you want something reliable for search and rescue teams to follow. (The video and its description are light on details regarding the type of device used.)

View on HN

From the video, it looks like they activated the aircraft's ELT, which is the aircraft version of a PLB. Same system, just integrated into the aircraft and designed to automatically activate in a crash.

At the time that video was recorded (1989), ELTs were analog-only... nowhere near as accurate, and very prone to false alarms.

The new 406 MHz digital beacons are much more accurate. :)

Good point! Though, for being two decades and some change prior, being "only" 5 miles off isn't awful. It's not great either but certainly better than the alternative.

In this case, I'd assume they activated it manually since it wasn't a crash (nor was there an accident report on it that I could find)?

It even mentions that at the end of the video.

They were looking 5 miles away around a glacier!

Not sure about the states but most places require aircraft / boats to have locator beacons (bigger versions of PLB's.)

A handheld 406 plb like the ocean signal "rescueME" plb is essentially the same thing afaik.

I'm fairly certain it's the same here in the US. However, being as the video was from August 1989, I'm not sure what the regulations were. For instance, it wasn't until ASA flight 2311's crash in 1991 [1] when the regulations were changed to require CVRs and FDRs on small commuter aircraft, and general aviation has AFAIK traditionally lagged a bit behind. This may be one area where it hasn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Southeast_Airlines_Fl...

(Edited to fix the date, which I typoed. I just watched this on an episode of Mayday, which did bit of a disservice to the NTSB and Embraer tests.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com