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#199628 - 04/04/10 02:34 PM AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes
James_Van_Artsdalen Offline
Addict

Registered: 09/13/07
Posts: 449
Loc: Texas
Lapses hinder rescue teams hunting for lost planes

Excerpt:
Quote:

The 78-year-old Ohio businessman freed himself from the wreckage and, though badly injured, activated an emergency signal. For nearly six hours, the letters "EMRG" flashed on radar scopes at a Federal Aviation Administration facility near Atlanta, giving air traffic controllers a general idea of Smiley's location.

Yet it was full two days before rescuers arrived. Smiley was dead. He had scrawled a last note to his wife on an envelope.

I'm not sure what kind of emergency beacon shows up on an FAA radar screen?

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#199629 - 04/04/10 03:04 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: James_Van_Artsdalen]
JBMat Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 745
Loc: NC
Could have been the transponder that actually lets the control towers know whois who, who is where and who is doing what. Radar does none of those things, it's the transponder onboard the aircraft that transmits data to the towers.

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#199642 - 04/04/10 08:03 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: JBMat]
scafool Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 12/18/08
Posts: 1534
Loc: Muskoka
I didn't know about this so I had to look it up.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder_%28aviation%29

I hope somebody who actually knows about these systems answers.


Edited by scafool (04/04/10 08:08 PM)
_________________________
May set off to explore without any sense of direction or how to return.

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#199677 - 04/05/10 05:04 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: scafool]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
Oddly reminiscent of the delay in looking for the school ship Concordia: working PLB, apparently ignored for 16 hrs before anyone made a move.

Sue

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#199866 - 04/08/10 01:14 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: James_Van_Artsdalen]
KTOA Offline
Journeyman

Registered: 02/08/04
Posts: 86
Loc: SoCal
Below is the NTSB letter to the FAA with their recommendations concerning this issue (contains much more accurate info):

http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/letters/2010/A-10-001-009.pdf

In defense of air traffic controllers, after 30+ years of flying with them, they are simply awesome. Capable, professional and immediately available to help you out. They think in 3D with complete focus...don't know how they do it on a daily basis.

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#199901 - 04/09/10 03:00 AM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: KTOA]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
What I got from the link of the letter from the National Transportation Safety Board wasn't all that encouraging:

Some of their people can't tell the difference between north and south of the same city.

If an air traffic manager calls the Air Force Center and says they've got a flashing emergency locator beacon NORTH of the city, it may be lumped together with all incidents happening in the general area at the time.

Air Traffic Control can report a suspected crash with erroneous location info, promise to send radar data ASAP, and apparently forget to do it.

Even if a plane goes down on a GOLF COURSE, air searchers may be only able to determine the general location of the ELT signal. General location? These ELTs only provide general information?

Following some accidents, ground searchers are provided with conflicting and inaccurate information on the aircraft's last known position:

* Just because air traffic control HAS the radar info, it's a crapshoot whether or not it will be made available to local responders to assist in the search.

* Some airports lack qualified personnel to provide the needed data, so even if it's available, searchers can't have it.

* An automation tool called CountOps can produce the last known latitude and longitude position of an aircraft immediately, but since some of the controllers haven't been trained on that feature, it's useless.

And then they say some of the problems are caused by "the lack of standard phraseology" Are all these traffic managers using too many acronyms? Too many weasel words? Here's a suggestion: USE REGULAR ENGLISH, such as "flashing emergency locator beacon six miles south of Atlanta"?

When you use a form of corporate-speak, with all the clear meaning sucked out, in a situation with people's lives at stake, it's a totally insane situation.

No ELBs are going to fix stupid. If your ELB works, but it takes days to find you and you're dead, can you get your money back?

Sue

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#199925 - 04/09/10 04:22 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: Susan]
NobodySpecial Offline
Member

Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 197
Originally Posted By: Susan
Some of their people can't tell the difference between north and south of the same city.

Had that - especially a problem in cities where West-TOWN may be 10miles from TOWN, or A street W and A street E may be miles apart and you just get the message TOWN.

Quote:
Air Traffic Control can report a suspected crash with erroneous location info, promise to send radar data ASAP, and apparently forget to do it.

Understandable in small ATC, their main job is to land their planes. Passing on info from other agencies to other agencies isn't the priority. Most small ATC don't have spare staff to hand this off to.
Quote:
General location? These ELTs only provide general information?

The older 121MHz did, there shouldn't be any left, but this may be old info.

Quote:
it's a crapshoot whether or not it will be made available to local responders to assist in the search.

Always true when you have multiple agencies working together.
"Security" makes it worse, we now have a lot of radio systems that can't interoperate because everybody got new secure digital systems in the great terrorism sales event - and of course you can't let civilians mountain rescue have access to airforce radio codes, who can't have coastguard codes....

Quote:
Here's a suggestion: USE REGULAR ENGLISH, such as "flashing emergency locator beacon six miles south of Atlanta"?

Sorry - plain english is the last thing you want. That's why we have spent nearly a century creating standard phrases for radio, ships and now planes.

eg. flashing emergency locator beacon six miles south of Atlanta"

flashing = do you mean triggered or intermittently failing?

locator beacon = do you mean a PLB or the airports ILS locator?

6mi south Atlanta = south of the airport (which may be 6miles north of the city) or south of the city?
Do you mean the city center as reported by google maps, in which case 6mi south is probably in a suburban mall. Or 6mi south of the edge of the built up area?

There are areas here where we have to worry about NAD83 or CONUS27, rescue helos want lat/lon DMS, planes want Deg.mmmmm, the mountain rescue want map grid.

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#199936 - 04/09/10 07:12 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: NobodySpecial]
KTOA Offline
Journeyman

Registered: 02/08/04
Posts: 86
Loc: SoCal
121.5 MHz ELTs just send out a 'blind' signal for SAR to home in on.

The new 406 MHz ELTs typically send a GPS location to the satellites.

A transponder sends out a four (4) digit signal, controlled by the pilot, which the ATC control radar recieves.

Flying is a risk. If the government or volunteers can help me out when things go south, then great. But I'm out there knowing I control my destiny not ATC or SAR.

ATC charter is to seperate airplanes. Rescue support is on the list but it's not there main focus. Fortunately they don't get a lot of practice. I can't speak for them, or the SAR folks, but I can easily imagine how quickly things can get complicated. So many entities involved, working realtime...geez.

Again, the people working ATC are awesome. Period.

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#199938 - 04/09/10 07:18 PM Re: AP news: Lapses hinder hunting for lost planes [Re: KTOA]
Russ Offline
Geezer

Registered: 06/02/06
Posts: 5357
Loc: SOCAL
I think the beacon in question was neither a 121.5 no 406 ELT, it was an aircraft transponder w/ code 7700 (Emergency) dialed in. They should have referred to it as a transponder rather than as a beacon.
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