ELT requirements

[Guest Redair]

Greetings each, after much fruitless searching, I am drawn again to seek advice from the wise... Can anyone either tell me what specifications are required of ELTs, (carried in 2 seat ultralight aircraft) or direct me to a clearly written policy? I am not looking for when and where to carry said item, but a defined outline of what does or does not constitute a suitable ELT. Please forgive a question which may well have been asked previously.

 

Regards, Redair.

 

 

[AVOCET]

Hand held ones , 406 with a GPS , cost around $400 . Plus you have to register them with the search and rescue mob .

 

 

[dutchroll]

Civil Aviation Regulation 252a, subpara (4) details the eligibility requirements for ELTs to become "approved", subpara (5) details the "approval" standard for fixed ELTs, subpara (6) details the "approval" standard for portable ELTs.

 

Essentially, an ELT (fixed or portable) must transmit on 121.5 and 406MHz, be registered with AMSA, and hold the relevant FAA TSO approvals.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Avocet....me being pedantic again.....ELT's don't have to have GPS fitted to be "suitable".....That said....given the choice and a few more ready $ to throw at the problem I'd have one with GPS every time......

 

406mhz allows a smaller area to be searched than 121.5mhz....but even though its smaller its still bloody huge when compared to an exact GPS fix...... means that the dornier doesn't have to burn figure 8's overhead trying to find you in the "general area" something that if I was in serious pain or slowly bleeding out I'd be keen to bypass if at all possible...

 

Surprised that portables need to be TSO'd.....the amount of a particular portable that end up in an aeroplane as opposed to any other dangerous leisure time activity would be small.....but not a bad thing...in fact a good thing to be sure of a repeatable quality std.

 

Andy

 

 

[AVOCET]

Avocet....me being pedantic again.....ELT's don't have to have GPS fitted to be "suitable".....That said....given the choice and a few more ready $ to throw at the problem I'd have one with GPS every time......406mhz allows a smaller area to be searched than 121.5mhz....but even though its smaller its still bloody huge when compared to an exact GPS fix...... means that the dornier doesn't have to burn figure 8's overhead trying to find you in the "general area" something that if I was in serious pain or slowly bleeding out I'd be keen to bypass if at all possible...

 

Surprised that portables need to be TSO'd.....the amount of a particular portable that end up in an aeroplane as opposed to any other dangerous leisure time activity would be small.....but not a bad thing...in fact a good thing to be sure of a repeatable quality std.

 

Andy

Yea , that was a pretty pathetic post ,

 

Ill do some research next time!

 

Cheers

 

 

[dutchroll]

Surprised that portables need to be TSO'd.....the amount of a particular portable that end up in an aeroplane as opposed to any other dangerous leisure time activity would be small.....but not a bad thing...in fact a good thing to be sure of a repeatable quality std.Andy

The TSOs applicable for ELT compliance are C91a and C126. TSO C91a sets out the performance standards for emergency locator transmission on 121.5 MHz, and TSO-C126 does the same for transmission on 406 MHz. So you could understand how those TSOs would be applicable whether or not the unit is portable, as they still have to transmit a suitable distress signal on those frequencies either way.

 

 

[djpacro]

http://beacons.amsa.gov.au/beacon-models.html

 

CASA regulations allow for PLBs or EPIRBs to be carried in General Aviation aircraft as an alternative to an ELT.

[Guest Redair]

Thanks for the replies gents. Sadly my searching of regulations have only led to me being tied in knots... regarding whether the thing should be ELT PLB or EPIRB. I have had many different stories. It would appear that the beacon must activate on impact, unless it is a Tuesday, or if your Grand Parents are both with you at the time. However, if your Grandmother is knitting this voids the regulations all together. I guess what I am looking for is an easy answer, to find the smallest/lightest distress device which can be carried in a recreational aircraft, meet the regulations and yet be effective. I already own a GME MT400 EPIRB, (bought for a boat) but thought it a bit heavy to re-register to the plane, that is if it was suitable to put in the plane... and there we come full circle back to my inability to decipher all the rules reg's and conditions. I have searched the RAAus site, but with no luck there either.

 

Redair.

 

 

[rgmwa]

A PLB will legally meet all your criteria.

 

rgmwa

 

 

[M61A1]

Cut and pasted from CAR's

 

252A Emergency locator transmitters

 

(1) The pilot in command of an Australian aircraft that is not an exempted aircraft may begin a flight only if the aircraft:

 

(a) is fitted with an approved ELT:

 

(i) that is in working order; and

 

(ii) whose switch is set to the position marked ‘armed’, if that switch has a position so marked; or

 

(b) carries, in a place readily accessible to the operating crew, an approved portable ELT that is in working order.

 

6) To be an approved portable ELT, an eligible ELT must meet the following requirements:

 

(a) it must be portable;

 

(b) it must be of one of the following types:

 

(i) an emergency position indicating radio beacon of a type that meets the requirements of AS/NZS 4280.1:2003;

 

(ii) a personal locator beacon of a type that meets the requirements of AS/NZS 4280.2:2003;

 

(iii) a type authorised by the FAA in accordance with:

 

(A) TSO‑C91a for operation on 121.5 MHz; and

 

(B) TSO‑C126 for operation in the frequency band 406 MHz–406.1 MHz;

 

(iv) a type that CASA is satisfied:

 

(A) is operationally equivalent to a type mentioned in subparagraph (i), (ii) or (iii); and

 

(B) performs at a level that is at least equivalent to the level of performance of a type mentioned in subparagraph (i), (ii) or (iii).

 

Also-http://beacons.amsa.gov.au/beacon-models.html

 

I personally have a GME MT410 (listed on above page) , in it's case, it's about 130 x 40 x 75mm and weighs about 250g

 

 

[dutchroll]

Thanks for the replies gents. Sadly my searching of regulations have only led to me being tied in knots... regarding whether the thing should be ELT PLB or EPIRB. I have had many different stories. It would appear that the beacon must activate on impact, unless it is a Tuesday, or if your Grand Parents are both with you at the time. However, if your Grandmother is knitting this voids the regulations all together. I guess what I am looking for is an easy answer, to find the smallest/lightest distress device which can be carried in a recreational aircraft, meet the regulations and yet be effective. I already own a GME MT400 EPIRB, (bought for a boat) but thought it a bit heavy to re-register to the plane, that is if it was suitable to put in the plane... and there we come full circle back to my inability to decipher all the rules reg's and conditions. I have searched the RAAus site, but with no luck there either.Redair.

Hey Redair, don't let yourself get confused with the terminology.

An EPIRB and a PLB are both "portable ELTs" under the CASA definitions. It is one and the same. They're just names. Extract from CAR 252a:

 

"eligible ELT" means an emergency locator transmitter, emergency position indicating radio beacon or personal locator beacon that meets the requirements mentioned in subregulation (4).

The only difference is that if the ELT is a fixed ELT, it must activate on impact. If it is a portable ELT ("portable ELT", "PLB", "EPIRB", whatever name you want to give the thingy which isn't permanently bolted to the plane), there is no requirement for activation on impact.

 

In all cases, fixed or portable, they still must transmit simultaneously on 121.5 and 406MHz, and be FAA TSO C91a/C126 approved, and be registered with AMSA.

 

 

[M61A1]

Hey Redair, don't let yourself get confused with the terminology.An EPIRB and a PLB are both "portable ELTs" under the CASA definitions. It is one and the same. They're just names. Extract from CAR 252a:

 

The only difference is that if the ELT is a fixed ELT, it must activate on impact. If it is a portable ELT ("portable ELT", "PLB", "EPIRB", whatever name you want to give the thingy which isn't permanently bolted to the plane), there is no requirement for activation on impact.

 

In all cases, fixed or portable, they still must transmit simultaneously on 121.5 and 406MHz, and be FAA TSO C91a/C126 approved, and be registered with AMSA.

If you read the cut and past from CAR's, TSO is not necessary . Fixed OR portable and is ONE of the types -meets AS/NZS ,be TSO'd or, a type CASA is satisfied with, and the list goes on.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Yeah apologies - for portable ELT/EPIRB/PLB the Australian Standard can be substituted for the FAA TSO. (my edit time for the comment expired!)

 

I was also going to add that I imagine the CASA reasoning behind the automatic activation for fixed ELTs is that they can be installed in the plane in various locations which might not be accessible after an accident. Their presumption with a portable ELT/EPIRB/PLB is probably that you're going to have it on or near your person, and will be able to activate it with your last gasping breath.

 

 

[ianboag]

There was a study done in NZ a year or three ago about the effectiveness of ELTs. Seems that in roughly 20% of crashes the ELT gives a meaningful signal after the crash. The sample size was bout 100. In 80 cases of the 100 looked at the ELT burned, smashed or drowned. Admittedly drowning is a bit less likely in Oz.

 

There was a celebrated case where a tycoon crashed his helicopter in tiger country in bad weather. After a couple of weeks searching by half the nation's choppers, the wreck was found. The ELT aerial had snapped in the crash. CAA explained that the ELT had worked just fine and sent about 2000 distress signals. Only they never made it more than a metre or two because of said broken aerial. I would called that "failure" but what would I know?

 

We won't go into the other good stuff about TSO'd ELTs. The one that caught fire in a 787 at Heathrow recently. The fact the Artex ELTs in NZ have a humungous G-switch failure rate. CAA and Artex have been working on the problem for three years (the ELTs are still sold here) and a solution is expected Real Soon Now. The batteries in an ELT are a set of standard alkaline D cells packaged in heat shrink. The kind you buy for $2 each at SuperCheap. Only $200-odd for the certified version :-)

 

If you are serious about being found when something goes wrong .... buy an EPIRB to meet regs and get a SpiderTrack unit. Monitored active tracking blows ELTs into the weeds. The unit is about $800 and tracking is $20-50 or so per month. It's like cellphones - they have plans based on different levels of usage. I don't work for them.

 

What you get. Live web tracking of your flight - the normal ping interval is two minutes. There is a distress button function that does what it says. You can send pre-programmed text messages to pre-programmed recipients. All via satellite of course so cell coverage is not an issue. When you end a flight you sign off. If the pings stop with no signoff, the Spider folk generate texts/phone calls to a heirarchy that you specify. Mine goes first to me and a friend (10 minutes after the pings stop as I recall). If this does not resolve things the alert goes to the search and rescue people something like 15 minutes later. I am a bit ashamed to confess that I have had a couple of calls from them when I forgot to sign a flight off, They did explain that being as how my last position was a Feilding airfield and zero knots, they thought that if I was a smoking heap someone local would have noticed it.

 

There are other services like this - TracPlus comes to mind. There are also free (or very cheap) breadcrumb apps for smart phones. Active tracking rocks!!

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

I agree. No matter what beacon we carry, there may be situations where you don't get a chance to activate it. Having a tracking ap is Plan B, provided you can be sure someone is actually watching.

 

 

[ianboag]

I agree. No matter what beacon we carry, there may be situations where you don't get a chance to activate it. Having a tracking ap is Plan B, provided you can be sure someone is actually watching.

The Spider people watch your flight as part of the service. A no-brainer in my book.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Ia

 

The Spider people watch your flight as part of the service. A no-brainer in my book.

Ian are they competitive with the Spot service? I have used free iPhone Aps so far, but should invest in the reliability of a monitored service. Any details on cost?

 

 

[ianboag]

IaIan are they competitive with the Spot service? I have used free iPhone Aps so far, but should invest in the reliability of a monitored service. Any details on cost?

Spot is not top-grade technology - uses GlobalSat - a second-class satellite system (IMO). SpiderTrack uses Iridium. See www.spidertracks.com for info. SpiderTracks gives me total peace of mind for about $20/month for the flying I do.

 

 

[dutchroll]

The one that caught fire in a 787 at Heathrow recently. The fact the Artex ELTs in NZ have a humungous G-switch failure rate. CAA and Artex have been working on the problem for three years (the ELTs are still sold here) and a solution is expected Real Soon Now. The batteries in an ELT are a set of standard alkaline D cells packaged in heat shrink.

To be fair and add some further perspective:

 

- there are 6000 of the same ELTs in service as the one which caught fire in Heathrow, and none have caught fire until now.

 

- most modern ELTs, and PLBs, and EPIRBs for aviation, land, and marine users are now powered by lithium batteries just as the 787 one was.

 

- last year in the USA alone, there were 263 people rescued based on ELT and PLB satellite distress signals (207 in 2011, 295 in 2010, etc, etc).

 

In the latest study by the ATSB on ELT effectiveness which was conducted this year (only 12 weeks ago) it was found that they functioned correctly about 40-60% of the time, but that in addition to impact damage, there were also instances of flat batteries, not arming the ELT correctly, and not installing it correctly.

 

The study found that while they are certainly not 100% reliable, they still directly accounted for saving an average of 4 lives per year in Australian aviation accidents. I'd suggest that if you happened to be one of those 4 people per year, you would consider the ELT more than simply a regulatory hurdle.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

I agree, however with a success rate of 40% that suggests that as masters of our own destiny, to rely on ELT alone might well be sub optimal which is what Ian was getting at and I and others have stated in similar discussions for years..... SPoT or SpiderTracks or some similar system that works when all is normal as well as when things aren't is IMHO significantly better than a solution that relys on sh!t happening and it still then being available undamaged for its primary purpose. If SpiderTracks or Spot is destroyed in a crash it matters not because the lack of subsequent data tells a story as much as the existence of data from ELT.

 

When ADSB is ubiquitous then such 3rd party addons will probably become less of an improvement for the $ they cost. ADSB will provide a GPS derived location update everytime the unique serial number of your ADSB transponder is interrogated and it then responds. Given that the interrogations aren't just a general shout for all in a specific direction to respond as SSR is today, but rather a unique roll call one at a time, of known transponders in the ground stations coverage the interrogation stations can be omnidirectional and spread about such that better low level coverage should be possible than that attached to SSR where tied to primary radar heads today. But that's for the future...

 

Andy

 

 

[M61A1]

There was a study done in NZ a year or three ago about the effectiveness of ELTs. Seems that in roughly 20% of crashes the ELT gives a meaningful signal after the crash. The sample size was bout 100. In 80 cases of the 100 looked at the ELT burned, smashed or drowned. Admittedly drowning is a bit less likely in Oz.

One helicopter type that I worked on had the ELT antenna mounted on an aft cowl, one of the first things to break off in a prang was that cowl. The fix was to have a steel cable between the airframe and the antenna that was shorter than the ELT coax, so that even when it fell off, the coax was still attached to the antenna.

[ianboag]

One helicopter type that I worked on had the ELT antenna mounted on an aft cowl, one of the first things to break off in a prang was that cowl. The fix was to have a steel cable between the airframe and the antenna that was shorter than the ELT coax, so that even when it fell off, the coax was still attached to the antenna.

Unless one end of the cable ripped out of its attachment .... this is a crash we are talking about. And CASA wrote up a generic AD that said every ELT has to be fixed like this? Probably not. CAA here made noises about operators "taking steps to ensure antennae would survive a crash" but that was about it. This sort of tack-on to ELTs is a good idea, but basically it is just polishing a cowpat. Upside down, burning or drowning will still kill it.

 

Ask yourself - if the industry standard was cost-effective active monitoring (satellite/GPS) and someone proposed ELTs as an alternative, would the idea go anywhere?

 

 

[ianboag]

[/quote=dutchroll, post: 306868, member: 5732]

 

In the latest study by the ATSB on ELT effectiveness which was conducted this year (only 12 weeks ago) it was found that they functioned correctly about 40-60% of the time, but that in addition to impact damage, there were also instances of flat batteries, not arming the ELT correctly, and not installing it correctly.

 

I read the report. As the authors point out, the data are full of holes - hence the 40-60% range sort of statement. Their interpretation of the data is pretty reasonable given all the holes. In about 10% of crashes the ELT is how the SAR people found out about it. Also they describe a number of crashes where the ELT did not work - there was the burn/flip/drown etc problem and others that were unexplained. My reading of these was that Spidertracks would have worked - and had the SAR people on the job a lot quicker - for all of them ......

 

I'll park the soapbox and give this a break now :-)

 

 

[Guest Redair]

Thank you all. That has cleared it up for me. I don't often come out from under my stone, but when I do, there always seems to be plenty of help and advice here. Good work all, and thanks again.

 

Redair.

 

 

[AVOCET]

Sounds like ELT's. ASIC. cards , paper maps (air services ) are being relegated to the obsolete as new technology comes up with far more reliable ,safer ,and far cheeper options,

 

I'm starting to feel a bit ripped off financially and taken for a ride with people (casa)

 

Telling me what indeed to be safe .

 

In my prang , 2years ago last week ,the ELT' was found 2 weeks later underneath the wreck , along with my wallet ,

 

The iPhone had a smashed screen , but still worked for about 4 hours , it was used at Willcainia hospital to take a photo of my injured arm

 

Warning !!! Graphic injury photo.

 

Cheers Mike