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="" />