I am curious, does your office or any one else track your flights? We did this in the Channel Islands with every flight - it really paid off when a helo had to set down on the ocean one fine day, but only for about an hour. This was before the PLB era. After reading Ritter's post carefully, I think he may be suggesting that get a PLB.
We have specific procedures in place whenever an aircraft is dispatched, which includes the pilot/instructor creating a manifest of who is on board, where you are going, when you will return, etc. We also fill out a dispatch board with the same info, and a few more specific bits of info. If we are going past 25 miles from the airport, we file a VFR flight plan and update the info with FSS if we make any changes.
We have a fair amount of aircraft in the air all day long, and we all work together. We report our positions to each other quite often, not only for traffic avoidance, but also if there was a problem, it would narrow the search grid a fair amount.
Our company is looking into other methods of tracking flights, we tested some satellite tracking system, we have some ELT's installed in some aircraft. But all of that is in the test phase at this point.
And yes, it sounds like you have an extremely fascinating job.
I could definitely have a worse job.
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