406 ELT for Canada

[Roger Peterson]

From everything I read, the 406 ELT will still be required for entering Canada this spring. It looks like COPA lost their appeal.

[irishfield]

Imagine it will depend where you are going. We have until as late as Feb 1, 2011 to have a 406 in our birds if we do an annual one day before Feb 1, 2010. Any annual after Feb1, 2010 requires a 406 ELT for sign off.

If you are going North of the 55th in the western Canadian airspace (everything west of 80*W) or North of the 50th everywhere east of 80*W you need a 406 by Feb 1, 2009.

New or used aircraft that changed ownership are required to be equipped by Feb 1, 2009 with no phase in period.

[Roger Peterson]

We spend the summer north of Atikokan, On. Cross at Sandpoint on May 15.

[irishfield]

Then I would think you can follow the phase in period no different than we can. Atikokan Muni is N48W91

[aktango58]

So I would need one this march to fly from Juneau to Whitehorse???

[irishfield]

Sounds like it!

Not sure if they can make a US registered aircraft comply with this Canadian 406 ELT legislation or not though!

[Mike Woodson]

We all know that Canada is pushing the 406-Elt requirement. What I didn't know...

From AOPA Pilot Dec. 2008 page 29:

...Canada is proposing that 406-MHz ELT's be mandatory for entry into Canadian airspace with a compliance date of Feb. 2009 regardless of country of registry "and THEY WILL NOT ALLOW PORTABLE 406-MHz ELT's OR PERSONAL LOCATOR BEACONS TO BE USED INSTEAD OF A PANEL-INSTALLED UNIT."

I had not heard of the PANEL-MOUNT requirement. This changes the cost of compliance from $1,000 to $3,000. I don't get it! Why? Am I missing something?

[NimpoCub]

It kinda sucks to be mandated to spend another wad of $$, but it is (also) a GoodThing.
If I need to be found, I want it to happen quick.

I'm most impressed with the Pointer 406 ELT, it has a built-in GPS rx, so it knows where it's at all the time. As far as I know, it is the ONLY ELT to incorporate a GPS. Others can parasite a GPS location off your other GPS, but that costs another big wad of $$.

ELT with built in GPS for under $1000.
Comes with panel switch & can be powered by aircraft power.
What's not to like??

Go read this:
http://www.pointeravionics.com

[Roger Peterson]

I think you just need the remote panel, not a complete panel mount unit.

[aktango58]

Go ahead and shoot me, but here is a thought.

ELT's are to find your lost A##, or any other part of you when things go wrong, Agree?

ELT signals take hours to track down, when they are recieved, Agree?

The couple of times I have had to use an ELT it took hours to find me, good thing I was not bleeding, though I was parked in the open with a broke plane with no radio communications...

So having an ELT that is far superior installed into your plane would be a large help in reducing time to find you, reduce search and rescue costs, and reduce the risk that great people like many here encounter while searching for some 'intermitent ELT signal' with a pinpoint location of plus or minus 50 miles...

The new ELT's are about 1,000, and take a couple of hours to install, maybe a bit more if you need to put a new switch hole in the dash.

IF AOPA had thought about the overall effects of these improvements to safety, the elt manufactures would be ensured many more sales, and from a competition standpoint would drop their price to sell their unit, and many of them.

Now we are not required, so these developments will take more years to pay off the research, and the price will remain higher.

AOPA blew it on this one. Maybe Supercub.ORG should take the iniative to contact the ELT manufacture folks and we could get a group discount!

I will sing up right now! But I want the built in GPS

Thank you Nimpo for the research

[irishfield]

I don't know if Canada is "pushing" the requirement. 121.5 is gonna get shut down... I guess in reality they're (Transport Canada) just being proactive to save as many of our sorry butts as they can.

That said... as of the COPA paper that just came out (Decembers).. the regs are temporarily on hold due to massive public input. TC is now going to access and see if they should make any changes to the regs before finalizing them and announcing them in the National Gazette II...but Given that the deadline for shutting off 121.5 is fast approaching they are motivated to decide soon.

[Chuck E.]

In the last two crashes of twin engine airplanes here in B.C. where some people died and some lived in both crashes the ELT's were silent.

Therefore a simple Spot would have been better.

[Mike Woodson]

My point is that while the 406-ELT's will improve search and rescue and I am OK with that, why do we need a panel mount unit at $3,000 when the $1,000 units will supposedly have the same capability. Maybe the AOPA article is just unclear as to the facts...or maybe "panel mount" just means a remote switch as was said earlier. I am sure this will all shake out before I/we spend the $'s.

Happy Thanksgiving

[irishfield]

Remote switch in panel... like all our legal options for current install under the 121.5/243 regs in place now. Unit can still be in the tailcone somewhere.

[aktango58]

Mike,

I have not studied the regs as to requirements.

I can tell you about ten years ago the regs changed to require all installations of new elt's required a switch mounted on the panel that included an indicator light so the pilot could look and see that the ELT was a. activated, b. in the off, on or arm position, and c. could activate it from the cockpit in an emergency to maybe be sure the thing was on.

My guess is the new ELT's need the same, not the entire unit on the dash.

Does anyone know how the SPOTs do from inside the cockpit of a cub?

[Roger Peterson]

I use my Spot all the time, Just throw it up on top of the instrument pane.

[FdxLou]

Mike Mitchell's SPOT saved his life in his Cub a few months back.

Lou

[NimpoCub]

I think the "panel mount" is just a control switch gizmo that mounts up front somewhere.

The on/off/arm feature & the indicator tells you if it is on or not, but most importantly, aircraft power is supplied to the GPS part of the ELT via the panel switch so it is on & tracking your location all the time. Without power supplied, the ELT battery wouldn't last long.

I understand that the "panel mount" is just the control/power thingie.
Also, the ELT has an internal buzzer to alert you that it is activated, so you can be assured that someone knows, or say oh $hit & turn it off.

[fobjob]

So, Nimpo, did we ever establish whether the Pointer actually transmits location data on the first (on impact) transmission? Or, does it wait 50 seconds for the second burst?

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And if it waits until the second burst, why bother to power up the GPS with aircraft power??

[aktango58]

which pointer are you guys looking at?

Is it the 8000?

MTV, read your comments on the backcountry site: I like a man that says his mind!

[NimpoCub]

Umm, dunno FobJob. I remember asking about that but don't think I heard back.
I guess I ASSumed it sent location coords right away, that's why it's keeping track, right?

I agree that could make a diff, but not much...
As you pointed out before, lots can happen in that first minute during/after a "severe bad landing". Thing is, whatever flavor of ELT is back there, is gonna suffer the same. If your ELT starts bleeping right away, what good is it if it "goes off" in that first minute?

That Pointer Guy joined up here & answered a couple questions & then went away. I'll see if I can scare him up again.

I tried to find the stuff they make "black boxes" out of, but all I could find was Stitts PolyStuff.

[fobjob]

The first data burst goes out while the aircraft is still crumpling up, and generally before the ELT is destroyed or rendered ineffective by sinking or combustion....if the first data burst does not yet contain the location data, then it doesn't matter what you have back there....
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I seem to remember that he implied that the location data didn't go out until the second burst 50 seconds into the crash.....I think we need clarification on that point....

[aktango58]

Imagine sitting at 500' with a dead engine, touching one button on the dash and your elt saying: This is Noh-shi#, contact number is... LAT/Long Is.... all in the time it took you to complete your emergency check list...

Now to find the sucker...

[NimpoCub]

Sent email to the PointerGuy, inviting him back here to answer the questions. Told him there's 4500 folks reading.
(that should be good bait for a salesman 'eh?)

AkTango, hopefully the Spot will be redundant, but if not, it's another GoodThing (TM Martha)

[aktango58]

Nimpo,

I shot him an email.

The idea behind the spot is that the home office can know where we are, or we can alert them to difficulties without the SAR alert.

I fly a coastal area that I am at times 2+ hours from any communications when the RCO's are out, so am trying to tighten the box with the spot.

The 406 is a great idea also.

[NimpoCub]

I seem to remember that he implied that the location data didn't go out until the second burst 50 seconds into the crash

Well, I'm thinking (never mind, now) that that's a whole lot better than the other (two) brand offerings, where the GPS coords NEVER go out.

Whad'ya think?

[fobjob]

Well, as I said in the previous thread, it's easy to accomplish the desired end, so if this particular product is falling short of that, then why buy it?

[NimpoCub]

Sorry, I didn't get your point.

"it's easy to accomplish the desired end,"
What is the desired end which is so easy?

"if this particular product is falling short of that, then why buy it?"
I guess I don't understand "falling short". This unit does exactly what the others do, PLUS it sends out the GPS coords. Even if it does only sends them after a 50 sec. delay, it's still better than not ever sending them, right? That's my only point. (Besides, it's cheaper too)

I reckon that MOST times, the (any) ELT signal gets out. Rarely it will fail/burn before it can send a signal. It's unreasonable to expect that anything in life will be 100% in every scenario.
(My opinion)

[aktango58]

Nimpo,

You I believe have a big disadvantage, you MUST have one installed in the next couple of months, no option for you.

We on the other side will, but it gets put off.

The down side I can see with the pointer unit is that it weighs about a pound more than the other 406 options.

However, when I consider the amount of wires, the need for my gps to be on, and the extra interface cost to get the info out on the others, the pound appears to not be a problem!

FobJob,

I think I get your point, that it takes a bit of time for this elt to aquire location after impact before it can send GPS locations. However, the first burst from the ELT as it is getting crumpled, (and if you know you are going down you as pic should have already turned on your elt from the dash!) will have information on WHO YOU ARE. At least that reduces the time for the SAR guys trying to determine:

1 is it another false alarm?
2. Who owns this thing?
3. within what general area are they

SAR can call the home office where the elt is located, (by the time the call is over the GPS coordinate has come through), send someone to check if that plane is sitting in it's parking spot, and check with FSS for flight plan...

Wow, I filed to go out into a bay and check my shrimp pots, and my GPS went off: SAR then things "hey, he might need help".

I will bet that in less than an hour there is help with these, gps or no.

Gps after 50 seconds, (granted if It burned or sank, it won't work, but I am most likely beyond care then anyway), just reduces the time that my friends, wife, family and everyone else is torn up waiting to find me.

We had a plane disapppear this last summer with the Deputy Comis of Revenue and his son returning from a gear pic up 20 miles away.

Bad weather, bad weather search. lots of people spent lots of time looking to no avail. Maybe, just maybe a 406 might have helped. Maybe not.

How many folks want to try and get together and see if we can get a wholesale discount by buying 100 or more of these????????

[fobjob]

OK, if you buy it, then you are not encouraging them to do it right...and then it won't be long before they do, or someone else does...assuming the GPS is up and running on aircraft power, it provides a serial data stream every second or so to the ELT. In order to have data ready to go the instant the impact switch activates, the serial GPS data has to be stored in a buffer, so that the most recent intact (serial) frame of data is available to the transmitter. If, for some idiotic reason, they didn't design storage into it,(the storage hardware is already there, incorporated into the microcontroller) then it would have to wait for the next frame, and the half-second transmit data burst opportunity would be gone, and it would have to wait 50 seconds for the next transmit opportunity.....I don't want to get all wound up in speculation about this, until we get a definitive answer as to whether the location data actually goes out in the first half-second transmission....
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In other words, there is NO good reason why it shouldn't be able to transmit location data on the first burst.....

[aktango58]

Fob,

Good thoughts, and I believe that the 'interface' units would be able to do this now. It would suprise me if they did not!

My dislike with this process is in the Murphy's Law of my life, the time I need the info I would be flying to the cabin and would ignore the avionics, meaning that I don't have anything on to give the ELT info on where I am anyway...

Or you have a power failure or GPS failure, or the gps gets stolden again and the loss of power/gps info assists in the demise of the flight...

My personal desire is to have the ELT it's own unit. Installed, Antenna installed inside the fabric (if possible) so the longerons protect it, and be a stand alone piece of safety that does not get affected by the nut holding the stick not turning stuff on etc.

This is a great discussion FOB, including the thought that by not purchasing we can get a better unit. You have me thinking.

Anyone that does, has done, search and rescue out there want to chime in?

MTV????

[fobjob]

GPS receivers are very available and inexpensive, and about the size of a postage stamp....(your cell phone probably has one by now....), so there is no reason why the GPS can't be in the ELT itself, and dedicated to it's one job of telling SAR your location. It does need power, and quality monitoring, to make sure that it doesn't provide garbage when the time comes. Since the serial data format that comes out of the GPS is one format, and the ELT transmit format is quite different, there has to be a microprocessor to pick bits out of the one and place them (in order) in the other (with a mailbox memory in between)...it also needs to stack up several updates to have one available to pick from in case the most recent is invalid...I think the problem(if, indeed, there is one) is that the microprocessor is not being powered up along with the GPS on aircraft power.
Your points are all good, that anything is an improvement over the old system, and Nimpo may be behind the bureaucratic eight-ball up there, but for me, I'll wait....
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Nobody wil be able to afford anything six months from now anyway, so buy it while you can.....

[NimpoCub]

OK, if you buy it, then you are not encouraging them to do it right...

OK, now I get your point. Good one too.
So, I'm anxiously awaiting the PointerPerson to answer that question. I had no idea all the electronic gyrations that has to get done before the GPS coords can get sent.

I'll say that I'd be surprised if the unit with the built-in GPS doesn't reformat & be prepared to send the info on that first burst tho. If not, as you said, it would severely limit it's usefulness in some situations.

I also agree with NOT being the first on the block to buy something new, but our TC (our version of your FAA) seems to be ramming this through without listening to concerns of users. They seem to have taken the stance that "We know what's best for you."

Like I said earlier, it sucks to be mandated into buying something. We have 2 months left.

[aktango58]

Nimpo,

From what I can find out from our local FAA, and from MTV's comments, even with no GPS at all, the 406 satalite can pinpoint you within a VERY SMALL area. one quote was 9 meters.

So even without GPS, this is a major improvement, when previously it was lucky to be in the same state at times.

Lots of $$$, but even the no fancy model is supposed to be far better than what we used today.

[fobjob]

Don't want to start a big technical digression, but doppler location of the 406 signal when there is only one-half second of it every 50 seconds is pretty much impossible.....so I don't buy into that argument at all until someone can explain it to me. None of the ELT technical articles even touches on it.....
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It may be a holdover from the early test units that transmitted continuously........
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In fact, I don't think that it's possible to doppler locate on the 406 signal AT ALL....leaving only the GPS signal to depend on....
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The sat moves 243 miles in 50 seconds.....

[NimpoCub]

OK, I'm now unpleasantly surprised. Fobjob is right, it won't send your GPS coords until the second burst. PointerGuy says it's to prevent false alarms to SAR, gives you a chance to turn it off.

Damn. Here I thought this was gonna be a GoodThing.
Looks like we just get another beeper on a different freq.

Copy of the email I got back today:

We have tried to keep the QA session going and every Friday we have check the discussion for additional questions but have not received any questions in quite some time. This discussion can be found at http://www.supercub.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=16734 and our latest QA response st at the bottom along with the answer to your question that I will copy for you here:

Q) Your wording suggests that the first 406 burst is not at the moment of impact activation...??

A) Yes that is true the 406 signal will not be transmitted at the moment of impact and may be delayed by up to 50 seconds as is the case with all 406MHZ ELT's. I dont know exactly why this is done but it may simply be to allow a person the opportunity to turn the unit off, in the case of a false activation, before alerting SAR. Upon impact/activation the unit will immediately send out the 121.5 MHZ beacon but because the satellites will not monitor this signal the SAR teams will not be deployed which is a good thing in the case of accidental activations that may only last 20-30 seconds.

If there is a better way to keep track of the current discussion then let us know but as it is now we never really know which posts are relevant to our ELT and we just thought that people would be directed to our original QA session so we dont have topics being repeated.

If you forward a link to the new discussion I can post new answers or link already answered questions.


So, I sent him the URL for this thread. <sigh>

[fobjob]

Well, isn't that just great. The serial number(tail number) doesn't even go out on impact....real nice. I guess the gummint decided to emasculate the system just so they wouldn't have false alarms to disturb their naps....better hope you survive the crash well enough to activate your PLB...and/or press the button on your Spot Messenger....makes the 1000 dollar price tag a lot less attractive, doesn't it??

[Pointeravionics]

Hello Everyone,

I'm just looking over the questions here and should be able to have some answers up very soon.

I just wanted to clear a few things about 406 ELTs in general as it appears that some of you feel that this system is not an improvement over the previous 121.5 system.

1)No 406MHZ ELT transmits a 406 burst upon impact and as I said in my email to Logan

"This May Be To Prevent False Alerts"

but I can't confirm that it's just my opinion as you can tell by my choice of words.

I think that this system is needed If you consider having resources deployed to investigate a false alarm costs tax payers about $25 000 as well as prevent those resources from performing other rescues that may not be false alarms.

2)As I said in an earlier post the first 406MHZ burst will occur up to 50 sec after impact and will be able to transmit the most recent co-ordinates collected by the transmitter in that first burst.

You can see this post at this link ( latest post at the bottom)
http://www.supercub.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=16734

3)In response to the statement

location of the 406 signal when there is only one-half second of it every 50 seconds is pretty much impossible

The 406MHZ signal is primarily used in the initial stages of the rescue and is triangulated by the satellites to provide rough co-ordinates as well as the message containing registration info and gps data if available.

Once inside the rough search area the SAR teams will use 121.5 MHZ signal to locate the position of the aircraft. If the message contains gps data the initial rough area will be greatly reduced enabling a faster rescue.

So with the above said this system has the potential to save many lives especialy in remote areas where hills and canions may reflect the 121.5 signal putting the SAR teams way off course.

I hope this information is helpfull and I will be checking in again soon with more answers. We will be once again checking for new posts every Friday so you can checkin the days following for answers.

Regards,
Pat

Pointer Avionics

[aktango58]

1. do all 406 elt's have a GPS system to send info? or are we relying on the models that do or have the interface?

2. What difference does 50 sec. make??? Sar gets a signal and confirms the owner/plane anyway. That 50 Seconds could mean the difference beween the ELT being on the surface, or at 50' of depth, or burned...guess it doesn't matter as I will be kaput andyway.

3. If I know things are bad and turn the ELT to On on the dash, how soon until the first set of " " messages goes out?

[fobjob]

Pat, thanks for your efforts to straighten out what seems to be a lack of published information on the new elt system. On point #1, transmitting the serial number was to make it easy to resolve false alarms by calling the numbers on the contact list. So, your 25,000 dollar figure does not apply in this instance. On point #2, if nothing goes out for 50 seconds, then what is the point of powering up the GPS with aircraft power when co-ordinates can be had from most modules in about 30? On point #3, I would be interested in knowing how the satellites "triangulate" on the elt...in regard to the low orbit satellites, the receiver on the satellite is simply a "translator" which converts 121.5, 243.0, and 406.025 Mhz to a set of frequences around 1.3 Ghz for the downlink. The ground stations have a computer which performs a real-time Fourier analysis on the carrier wave and computes the moment of frequency shift when the satellite passes the elt latitude and computes the amount of frequency shift to reveal the left-right distance from the satellite track of the elt location. Subsequent passes are required to resolve the left-or-right of track ambiguity. Many more passes are required to fine down the footprint area to a small enough area to exclude airports, at which point, finally, AFRCC notifies a SAR agency....121.5 frequencies took about 5-8 hours to do this, and it would be less at the 406 Mhz frequency, but for it to work AT ALL, the burst has to happen at the moment of satellite passage, about a 1% chance....OR, the 406 carrier has to be on all the time....IF there is a signal strength monitoring system going on in the high-altitude satellite system, in order to perform a rough triangulation, this is the first I've heard of it.... also, 406 Mhz reflects just fine....it refracts just fine, too....
AKTango, he's saying the serial number doesn't go out for 50 seconds, also....so nobody will know if you burn or sink....about like it is now....