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#28333 - 06/15/04 10:36 PM McMurdo Precision EPIRB and FastFind PLB
aardwolfe Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 08/22/01
Posts: 924
Loc: St. John's, Newfoundland
I just checked the McMurdo website (http://www.mcmurdo.co.uk/) and their home page has an upgrade notice. Click on the link and this is what I found:
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As a responsible manufacturer we appreciate consumers will be concerned by the reported results from recent trials in the USA.

Under certain conditions, the trials indicated the above products may not acquire and transmit a GPS location. You can be confident that these McMurdo products continue to meet all necessary approval requirements, they fully comply with the COSPAS-SARSAT, R&TTE, FCC and RTCM standards and will transmit a 406 MHz distress alert within 3 minutes to the GEO-Stationary satellites for onward transmission to the rescue authorities.

However, based upon the concerns these trials may have raised within the market, McMurdo will be taking this opportunity to conduct an important program to enhance the GPS performance of these products. This program will involve a factory software upgrade to both the GPS and Processor firmware within the product.

McMurdo will be providing this upgrade free of charge and will include, as part of the process, a comprehensive test of upgraded units.

We strongly encourage you to return your unit for upgrade. This will be undertaken at our main service centres at strategic locations world-wide. We will be writing to individual consumers to advise them on how the program will operate in their region, which will assist us in maintaining a comprehensive log of the upgrade program.
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I don't know whose reputation this says more about, McMurdo or ETS, but I thought it was interesting to see the impact that Doug's web site has on safety and survival manufacturers.

Btw, I also looked on the ACR Electronics website (http://www.acrelectronics.com/) and did a search for "Terrafix", which is their highly touted new PLB. The search turned up nothing, and I couldn't find the Terrafix in any of their product lists. What gives? <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
_________________________
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."
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#28334 - 06/15/04 10:45 PM Re: McMurdo Precision EPIRB and FastFind PLB
Doug_Ritter Offline

Pooh-Bah

Registered: 01/28/01
Posts: 2208
The question I was recently asked by a journalist and politely declined to answer was, "Do you think McMurdo would be offering this so-called "upgrade" if you had not done your evaluation and published the results?" What do you think? <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I suspect that the Terrafix is not on the ACR site in large part because they are paranoid about the idiots at the FCC. The FCC dingbats are death on offering a beacon prior to receiving FCC approval. It's asinine that they might consider such information as such, but nobody ever accused the FCC of having any smarts. So, you can't blame ACR for being paranoid as the FCC has absolute control over their ability to sell and is well known to be both vindictive and stupid, the very worst kind of government bureaucrat.
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Editor
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www.KnifeRights.org
www.DougRitter.com

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