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TP 13918 - 406 MHz ELT... The Next Generation of ELT

Please note that the following video about 406 MHz ELTs was produced in 2002. While some of its content is historical and dated, it still provides good basic information that is beneficial to Canadian pilots and aviation professionals. 

Open on airfield… then pilot filing flight plan. Move to Light plane on airstrip, in snowy weather- pilot checks plane
See pilot’s face to establish a human story.

1) This…is a typical Canadian pilot.

Show take-off, then gradual disappearing from sight (either a ground shot or an aerial shot).

Each and every day, Canadians like him ‘ break the surly bonds of earth’ and take to the skies.  Cautious and methodical, he is representative of the up to 46 000 licensed pilots who make up Canada’s General Aviation community.

Inside and outside shots

               (…control tower clearance…)

Once airborne, they travel great distances, over inhospitable terrain, through difficult weather…

2) And sometimes, because of unforeseen mechanical problems, sudden changes in atmospheric conditions or… human error… their lives and the lives of their passengers, take a sudden turn toward disaster…

Fade to sunset  synch with “last line”

SHOT OF MCC Trenton – Operator gets a hit – use on camera B-roll

406 MHz
The next generation
ELT

INSERT TITLE

Interview + crash site photos

INTERVIEW: Keith Gathercole…

There’s no pilot in the world that goes out there expecting not to come back. Most of them will tell you it just happens. Just so quick that… Bang ! Something goes wrong or they do something wrong, and the next thing they’re on the ground, and wondering how the heck they got there.

Cockpit shot. ELT installed
Pilot doing checks.
Perhaps tower in background

3) The final line of defense – the only piece of equipment onboard that works automatically in a crash situation and independently of all other electronics, is the Emergency Locator Transmitter, or ELT.

4) Emergency Locator Transmitters come in two types.  The original ones operate at a frequency of 121.5 MegaHertz, which was designated as the international aircraft distress frequency in the 1950s.

5) INTERVIEW – Bob Merrick

The beacons, when they were designed, weren’t designed to work with satellites. They did not have the frequency stability we required to provide precise location. The frequency wanders a little bit so that you can’t come up with a perfect position with one satellite pass. So it really messed up the position finding.

The second model sends out a digital signal on an entirely new frequency: 406 MHz -- It was developed to resolve issues, where the 121.5 fell short.

INTERVIEW – RCC Representative

The 406s are better in every possible aspect you can think of. They give instantaneous detection. We know where you are. We know who you are. And we know where to find you.

6)  Whenever an ELT is activated, the signal is transmitted upwards, hundreds of miles, to an earth-orbiting satellite.

Graphic of satellite relaying signal

7) INTERVIEW; BILL

" Having satellites are like having eyes in the sky, literally in space.... So having these eyes in space, can pick up signals or emergency beacons, several times a day."

It is real-life search and rescue drama that has played out successfully over 3700 times... and saved over 12,000 lives worldwide... 30 % are aviation related.

In 2000, 21% of these aviation accidents occurred in Canada."

INTERVIEW:  Keith Gathercole
We’ve looked at all search and rescue incidents where there were survivors involved, and we found that survival rates were greatest where we were able to get to the crash site the quickest. We found that after about 72 hours the survival rates was extremely low, probably less than 10 %. So that reinforced the notion that if we’re going to find somebody, if we’re going to pick a survivor out of an airplane crash, we’ve got to be there quickly. And, actually it was the ELTs and the satellites that have resulted. We do get there much quicker than we ever did before when we had to search thousands of square miles of territory visually to try and detect a broken airplane in trees or wherever it might be in snow or whatever.

10)  The Constellation of satellites that picks up these distress alerts....and notifies search and rescue authorities... is called Cospas-Sarsat...

12)  On June 30th, 1982, COSMOS 1383 was launched  from Plesetks, in Northern Russia. It would be the first satellite to carry experimental COSPAS-SARSAT technology as part of its payload. Within months this test would chalk up its first success.

(1st RESCUE  -- ROCKY MOUNTAINS)

Graphic, that spells Cospas-Sarsat., showing the four original countries

13 )   September 9th, 1982. A single engine Cessna, piloted by Joel Ziegelheim, had been flying a search pattern over the Rocky Mountains in northern British Columbia.. Ziegelheim and his 2 passengers were searching for an aircraft that had vanished, more than seven weeks before.

14) Suddenly their plane, unable to lift above the unexpectedly steep rising valley floor of a canyon, crashed into the trees. What happened next would launch Search and Rescue into the space age...

15) INTERVIEW: MAJOR TED KING Ret. (CANADA)

They had gone out and done an initial search without any luck, when Zeigelheim was reported overdue, so I was called in to see if we could use the satellite system to help.

16) At 2AM, Pacific time, Russia’s COSPAS 1 satellite
picked up a 121.5 MHz distress signal in the Rocky Mountains. The Russian satellite successfully relayed the signal, to Canadian search and rescue authorities

17): INTERVIEW: SGT. MAIDMENT (CANADA)
We proceeded out to the Latitude and Longitude they gave us...and we were approximately 10 miles from the crash site, and we picked up the ELT... And then we circled around... That’s when I spotted a tent... and the casualties... And that’s when we jumped in...
 
19) The single engine plane had crashed 80 kilometers, 50 miles, off its intended flight path and was way outside the prime search area.

20) INTERVIEW- SGT. MAIDMENT (CANADA)
If it wasn’t for the Cospas Satellite, it would have taken us maybe anywhere from three to four days, maybe a week to find the survivors... And if we had waited that long, (with) the type of injuries they did have, there probably would have been some... there probably would have been some deaths.... They wouldn’t have made it.

21) Finding Zeigleheim and his passengers dramatically proved the effectiveness of the brand new satellite technology for search and rescue... 

22)  INTERVIEW: Keith Gathercole 
It was just a marvelous invention because it saved us so much trouble. We were able to home in on the aircraft, and home in on people that needed rescue rather than having to search days and days and days. You know, a visual search. And sometimes those visual searches, in some of the conditions, particularly in the winter with fresh snow, you’re lucky to find them, we weren’t going to find them.

23) However, problems soon emerged. 121.5 MHz was already the international aircraft distress frequency.  Using that same frequency for the SAR satellite system would --in the long run -- prove to have almost as many limitations as it had benefits.

INTERVIEW – RCC Representative :
Now, there are many, many things in Canada that transmit on 121.5 MHz. It could be from a faulty microwave to a radio tower that does not function right. So there’s lots 121.5 hits that happen every day.

27) False alerts can also be activated by ELT’s themselves, through pilot error. 

INTERVIEW: John Kelly
If it’s a false alarm, and it’s at an airport, and the airplane is the hangar, it’s nice to know that nobody’s been hurt. But it’s also frustrating sometimes when you get called out in very bad weather, and you find out that an ELT has been taken out for maintenance and was not secured properly and now it has triggered the search and rescue resources.

ELT sfx and shot

In fact, 97% of the alerts received by rescue authorities on the 121.5 frequency are false alarms.

28) INTERVIEW: RCC Representative –

Initially when we get a 121.5 hit at a certain location we just monitor it. We wait for a second satellite pass to confirm the location of the signal. Unless we have other evidence that an aircraft is overdue within the region where the detection is, then we launch resources right away.

Plane wreckage on the ground

SAR team standing by, perhaps with helicopter on tarmac, perhaps packing their equipment.

2 &3) They contact NAV Canada, the agency that keeps track of planes that are in the air..

INTERVIEW with NAV Canada Rep.
We get notified by the RCC that they are picking up an Emergency Locator Transmitter signal and they ask us to monitor it or, if we have any aircraft flying within the area, to check with the aircraft if they can monitor 121.5 to see if they can pick up a signal.

Flight plans or flight itineraries give us most of the necessary information required to start the communication search. So flight plans and Emergency Locator Transmitters are both important tools to find a missing aircraft.

Would you monitor frequency 121.5 to see if you hear an ELT signal?

30) All this takes time… Valuable hours will pass before the 121.5 emergency signal can be declared real and the incident becomes a SAR case…

Ok the ELT signal is at 49:95 and 96:30

One volunteer group they turn to is CASARA or Civil Air Search and Rescue Association.

Light plane, pix of ELT.
Perhaps pilot

Map showing four RCC’s
Control centre,

People at computer screens
And on the phone.

31) Interview CASARA (John Davidson)
CASARA is called out whenever DND needs the assistance. And we provide it in two formats. Either providing spotters for the military airplanes, or we use our own aircraft to provide an initial response to local incidents. We will call out our crew and ask them to come out to the airport, prepare their tasking sheets get the maps plotted, the search areas plotted, and then we’ll launch and liaise with the Rescue Coordination Centre as the search progresses.

Ok. You see where the drop hit.
32)  SOUND UP ON RECEIVING CALLOUT.  FOLLOW ACTION TO PLANE TAKING OFF… 

SAR unit (Cape Breton?) scrambling to take off
Air to ground footage of wilderness forest.

CASARA pilots and spotters do everything they can to go to the assistance of fellow pilots as well as people lost in the bush…

34)

35)  

51) to 57) 

58) Realizing the flaws with 121.5 MHz, Cospas-Sarsat turned to digital technology to develop a new type of emergency beacon that provides much more than just a homing signal.

The new, more powerful beacon operates at 406 MHz  an exclusive, dedicated frequency, that cannot be activated by any other type of equipment.

INTERVIEW: Jim King
Well a few bits at the beginning of the distress message identify it as being from a 406 MHz distress beacon and the ground receiving systems check for those and if those bits are not in the message, then the system does not detect that as a distress beacon.

There’s also a significant improvement, in accuracy.

59) INTERVIEW AJAY MEHTA (UNITED STATES)
For 121.5 (MHz) beacons, the older beacons, the accuracy is generally good to 12 - 20 Kms... For searchers ... if you were; if you had an accuracy of 20 kms, you’d have to search an area the size of a city... So it is a large search area... If you are searching for a 406 (MHz) beacon, which has an accuracy of 2 to 5 kms, the search area corresponds to maybe a neighbourhood in a city... So it is a much smaller area.

64)  And there is another improvement….

INTERVIEW – Keith Gathercole
With the 406 beacon you’re going to be detected immediately. As soon as that signal goes off the geo-synchronous satellites or the orbiting satellites are going to pick it up, and they’re going to be able to give a position to the search and rescue centres within literally minutes of that ELT coming on the air. It takes all of the search out of search and rescue. The RCCs can then direct an aircraft to a position on the ground. If that’s where you are, they are going to be over your head within hours. It’s quick. Much sooner than if you had a 121.5 beacon, and if you’re badly injured, it will make the difference between you living and dying.   

60)  The 406 MHz system has another technological edge, one that helps rescuers determine almost immediately who is in trouble

61) 

62) INTERVIEW: BILL BURKHART (U-S):
Encoded in that digital signal there’s a unique number, unique to that particular beacon... And if that beacon is registered, one can correlate the owner of that beacon , the telephone number of the call... And so on and so forth... the type of boat it might be on or the type of aircraft it might be on... And get an understanding by a phone call whether a real distress is occurring or not.

69) By 2009 the old 121.5 MHz frequency will be phased out of satellite processing.  After that, the 121.5 beacons will no longer provide satellite alerting capabilities for their owners.

63) INTERVIEW  Keith Gathercole

What it means is basically we’re going back to the era of between 1972 and probably 1976-77 when somebody with a 121.5 beacon can be detected by another aircraft but won’t be detected by satellite. And so, once the satellites are not there, you’re asking people to go and do a visual or electronic search for you, and quite often it involves bad weather at night, and it would be CASARA whether it would be the search and rescue guys who have to go out and try to detect that ELT or to try to find you visually, you’re putting them at risk by not having the best equipment available to save your life compared to what you would be doing if you had a 406 beacon. 

98) In Canada, at least 47 people have lost their lives as a result of being involved in search and rescue missions.

95) One tragedy, in 1986, was especially difficult and heartbreaking. A light plane carrying two people went missing.   A second plane, with three people on board, went searching for the first aircraft and also disappeared.

96)

97) Then, a third search aircraft, a Canadian Forces twin Otter with eight people on board, also crashed.  The search would be in it’s 20th day before all three aircraft would be discovered.  There were no survivors.

65)

66) SAR authorities have much more confidence in the digital technology

INTERVIEW:  Canadian Herc Pilot –
406 beacons have a large advantage over 121.5 beacons in that we know where the beacon is and, just as importantly, who owns the beacon. What that does for us is basically it allows us to solve a lot of false alarm cases prior to launching the aircraft.

67)

68).

70)

71)

72)  (406 MHz) digital technology has already proven itself reliable and effective.  It has been successfully used in marine distress situations for more than 10 years.  

73) 

(3rd  RESCUE  -- CATAMARAN):

Doppler graphics
Car visual

74) On April 5, 1999... Claude Bistoquet learned the true value of his 406 MHZ emergency beacon...While crossing the Atlantic, six hundred and fifty nautical miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, his trimaran, the Acapella, caught in a storm with heavy seas and sixty to seventy knot winds, suddenly capsized. He and crewman Francois Forestier found themselves in desperate trouble.  The United States Coast Guard with Canadian SAR support – responded.

75) INTERVIEW - LCDR PAUL: STEWARD (U-S)
There was no way for them to signal for help even though they had all the latest electronic equipment on board... But what they did have on board was a 406 MHz EPIRB.

Planes &Helo’s flying over wilderness

76) Using this system we were able to nail down the time, and the place... We knew where they were, we knew when they lit off that beacon... when it was picked up by the satellite... we knew the name and full description of the vessel... And by the time we were able to talk with their family, how many people were on board, their experience level, the fact that it was a watertight compartment, and all this other information.

Comparative beauty shots:
121 beacon drifts into background
406 beacon appears in foreground

77) When we arrived on scene we deployed both rescue swimmers into this 25-foot seas... They swam to the capsized vessel. The two personnel popped the hatch, the two French Citizens, they climbed out, very cooperative... they were both harnessed up, one after the other... lifted up to the helo.

Graphic: 406 MHz.

They had mild to moderate hypothermia, and otherwise were in very good condition. So as we say in the Cospas-Sarsat and search and rescue business- two lives saved....

79) Because timing is so crucial in search and rescue operations, the 406 MHz system provides a huge technological upgrade.

80) Take the case of Benoit Boulet. 

In May of 2000 -- the helicopter pilot found himself alone and seriously injured, on the polar ice near Resolute Bay, in Nunavut. His two passengers died on impact. 

SAR unit taking off…
And flying over a rescue site …
And landing at the scene…
And helping victims…
And pulling them out.

83)  INTERVIEW – Benoit Boulet 
I was flying with scientists looking for polar bears, studying the polar bears and their feeding habits. By the time that the work was done a cloud cover was coming in. When I took off I had a reference to Lother Island, which was about seven miles to the South of my position. It’s when I made the turn to go to Resolute Bay that I got into a white-out condition. Then I tried to turn back to Lother Island, but during that turn I hit the ice.

From the instant that the aircraft touched the ground it’s a complete black out. Then I’m waking up on the ice. I had my left leg badly broken. I had my right ankle broken. My right arm was broken. I had some bones broken, my left hand. I tried to talk to my two passengers, but there was no answer. So then I saw sleeping bags close by. So I crawled 50 feet to retrieve those sleeping bags and try to keep me warm a little bit.

From the chopper itself, there was nothing left that could be salvaged. I mean the radio system of the helicopter. But we usually carry an emergency HF radio. So I was able to retrieve that radio. The only problem is that I had a 50-foot antenna to deploy which I was not able to do. 

84) 

80 – con’t…)

81) Seven hours after the crash, authorities back in Resolute became concerned and initiated a search.  All they knew was the general area he was in…  Full tanks and the nature of the work meant that the search area would be huge…

During the first six hours after the crash, nine Cospas-Sarsat satellites had passed over but failed to pick up the signal.  Then, Cospas 4 heard a brief burst from Boulet’s 121.5 MHz distress beacon. But the signal quickly disappeared. Because it was a 121.5, the RCC could not verify that this was an actual distress until Resolute notified them one hour later about the overdue helicopter. The RCC only had enough data to narrow the search area down to 160 square kilometres.

INTERVIEW – TSB representative
What we found is that the helicopter had the ELT mounted on a window or door frame close to the pilot, in the front of the helicopter. When the helicopter struck the ice these components were basically pulled apart and severely damaged. So the unit itself was disconnected from its antenna and it was basically turned upside-down and buried in the snow. It was not doing very well, but it was doing enough that we could tell it was functioning. But it wasn’t able to get its message out.

82) The signal would return briefly a few more times but was not strong enough or long enough for searchers to home in on it.  Ten more hours would pass before the pilot was found… Things would have been different with a 406 beacon.

85) INTERVIEW  Jim King

86) Well the 406 beacon transmits signals about 100 times more powerful than a 121.5 beacon. So even if it were damaged it still would have likely been picked up several hours earlier. And this would have allowed the rescue efforts to be initiated much earlier.

INTERVIEW Benoit Boulet
You think about your loved ones, my girlfriend, my son, my parents. You think you don’t want to die there.

Thirteen hours after the helicopter went down,  a Twin Otter spotted Boulet, semi-conscious, huddled among the wreckage.

INTERVIEW Benoit Boulet
There’s one plane that flew probably less than two miles from me, but couldn’t see me. And the one that found me flew right over me, right over the crash scene, and I’ve seen it. When it turned around I knew they found me.

The plane landed near the debris – Boulet was airlifted first to Resolute then to Ottawa.

87) TSB rep

The pilot was out there probably longer than he would otherwise have been because of the problems developing this signal.

Jim King…
Well he must have been wondering if his signal ever did get received, and whether they knew that it was him in distress. If it had been a 406 MHz beacon, the identification code that would be in the distress signal would have advised the SAR Forces who they are going to look for. And this would have allowed rescue efforts to be undertaken several hours earlier.

87) When a 406 ELT beacon alert came in to the US Air Force Rescue Control Centre at Langley recently, it demonstrated in no uncertain terms how  this advanced digital technology makes a big difference in a SAR case.

88)  INTERVIEW OF US Air Force STAFFER
It is an ELT. It is a SCTA ELT according to the registration data.

The case of what you saw today, what we had was an unlocated, registered, 406 aviation beacon. When we resolved the situation, it really wasn’t on long enough for that initial data burst of geo-coordinates to get in here, but the registration data was current. It was up to date. With two phone calls. First phone to the work location (left a message), second phone call to the home location. Now the second phone call, got a hold of the person on the registration data, asked him about his aircraft. He said it’s in the hangar. I’ll check on it. Within five minutes he phoned me back and that the aircraft is safe. It’s in the hanger. We’re doing some work on the ELT and accidentally activated it. So from start to finish, I don’t think it was 10 minutes before we had complete resolution of the case. Because it was 406, it was properly registered, and we could resolve the situation. Now on a 121.5 that would be impossible.

Sitting at the hangar in Bedford, Mass. He’s going to go check on it now.  Good. Resolved.

89) The entire incident was wrapped up with a few phone calls rather than with a pointless search that would have taken hours to verify and track down, wasting valuable SAR resources.

91)  

The 406 MHz digital beacons are more expensive than their older analogue cousins.

Transport Canada and the Avionics industry are working hard to change this.

92) INTERVIEW with Howard Poslun

What we’re trying to do in the development of this 406 low-cost project is reduce the cost of the 406 ELT. We feel it’s very important to have an ELT that is affordable to pilots, to general aviation, and we’re doing the R &D work so we can get this unit as low-cost as possible.

INTERVIEW with EMS
Pilots have been reluctant to trade in their 121.5 MHz beacon and buy a 406 MHz beacon because of the increased price. So if we can bring it down to the cost that they are used to paying for a 121 MHz beacon then we’re hoping to open up that market and to be able to maintain the safety of flight for those pilots. We’re trying to bring some of the latest technologies that have been put into cell phones and pagers into the ELT in order to take advantage of the economies of scale that those industries have been able to develop.

94)

121.5 beacons have served their owners well for more than a quarter-century.   But they are slowly going the way of rotary-dial-phones, charcoal barbecues and morse code...

INTERVIEW: JIM King
Most of the 121.5 beacons in use today were designed in the late 1960s. So they’ve been around for some 30 years. I don’t know why someone would risk their live using 30-year-old technology when the 406 MHz beacons are available today. They’re much more effective. They do a lot more. And the performances technically are far superior.

Interview Keith Gathercole
If you can afford to fly an airplane, in my estimation, then you can afford to buy the proper equipment to save your life, or you should be able to afford the proper equipment that’s going to be able to save your life.

Interview… usaf staffer
Like anything else, technology is finding its way into our business, and some of these technological advancements will just revolutionize the way we do business. 

93) 406 MHz ELTs offer technological advantages, NOW.  It is an essential piece of life-saving equipment, that should be on board every plane. With annual maintenance and fully-charged batteries, your beacon will aid pilots, passengers, worried family members – and those who risk their own lives to come to your assistance.

99)

100)”

101) 406 ELT’s. … taking the search … out of search-and-rescue.

Date modified:
2011-01-14