Well, that works

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Rich
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Well, that works

Post by Rich »

Got a call from the Air Force due to an ELT activation. The plane's in a shop at Bend OR airport (KBDN). In addition to installing an Aspen E5, I had them add the GPS feed to the 406 ELT I had installed years ago. They decided to test it without calling the Air Force first (Phone number right on the panel). :scream:
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Rich
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Re: Well, that works

Post by Rich »

The good news is the signal was received despite the antenna being contained inside the fuselage but also the plane itself was inside a closed steel hangar.

But I got to thinking about this a bit more. The idea is that one of my GNS units (I need to find out which one) is continually updating my lat/long so if the ELT goes off it'll transmit my location pretty accurately. But in some circumstances one may desire to turn off the master on the way down for one reason or another. This means that the last position update to the ELT could be seriously misleading. I wonder how that gets handled. :scratch:
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Steve
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Re: Well, that works

Post by Steve »

Rich:

The GPS position will be the last one before power off, as you said. But GPS position does not have to be transmitted to get a fix on the ELT. The satellite can locate the non-GPS ELT to a radius of 1-2 miles, although if it transmits an accurate GPS position this will be reduced to a few hundred feet. I would assume that if SAR gets a GPS position that differs significantly from the satellite-derived position, they would check both locations, which would certainly be in the same general area. My guess, anyway...

Steve
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