Finally!! A Bureaucrat with Common Sense

From today's AOPA news:

Canada Backs Off 406 ELTs Email this article |Print this article

By Russ Niles, Editor-in-Chief

Canada's Minister of Transport, John Baird, has overruled his bureaucracy and suspended implementation of a controversial rule that would have required almost all aircraft to have certified 406 Mhz emergency locator transmitters installed by February of 2011 in order to fly legally in Canada. The rule would have applied to aircraft trying to enter Canada from other countries. In an interview with AVweb at Canadian Aviation Expo in Hamilton, Ontario, earlier this week, Kevin Psutka, president of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), said the minister refused to sign the rule as presented by Transport Canada because it didn't include any viable alternatives to 406 ELTs, even though it included language that indicated an alternative method of compliance was possible. "There is no technology that exists today that could meet those (alternative) requirements," Psutka said. He said the minister has ordered his staff to draft a rule that gives new technology a fighting chance for acceptance.

Psutka and COPA have been fighting the mandatory equipage with 406 ELTs for 10 years, arguing the new ELTs, while somewhat improved in the level and types of information they provide rescuers, suffer from the same operational flaws as the old-style 121.5 units. The vast majority of ELT signals are accidental and do not announce any kind of emergency. On the other hand, when a plane does go down, they fail to trigger more than half the time, according to COPA's research. Psutka was urging Transport Canada and the Canadian Forces (which handles search and rescue) to consider new GPS-based systems that leave a "bread crumb" trail of position reports for rescuers to follow but the rule, as written, excluded all of them, he said. TC's position was that 406 ELTs meet International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards that changed when the satellite constellation that monitors search and rescue alerts stopped receiving 121.5 signals. The U.S. did adopt mandatory 406 equipage, but the military and Civil Air Patrol are recommending aircraft owners install the new ELTs.

Maybe we could adopt him into this country and run him for office. We could use someone with a spine to deal with the TSA.

gb

Justin,

My thoughts exactly. Head of Homeland Security!!!!!!!!!

Nice to hear a positive story!

There was a guy here first week in March from Nav Canada at the MT Aviation Conference and he said then no need for the 406 ELT. He knew then it wasn't going to be required.

If this bureaucrat set the ELT rule aside because a government has no business legislating common sense, I'd applaud him. That he did so saying 406 technology is not worthy? I think he's an idiot. That others celebrate him? It explains how idiots rise to high positions.

SB

Stewart,

Read the article, man. The gentleman didn't say that 406 technology isn't worthwhile.

What he SAID was that the ELT technology associated with the 406 beacons is not worthy, and I couldn't agree more.

For years, any time a 121.5 beacon went off, it was almost always found in a timely manner. There was, and is, nothing wrong with 121.5, and 406 has only one significant advantage: It's signal can contain a code to tell RCC who that beacon is owned by.

THAT is of virtually NO consequence to you or I if our beacons go off. The only significant advantage of the coded beacon feature is that it makes it a lot easier to track down inadvertanly activated beacons. In other words, the big advantage of 406 is simply that it reduces the false alarms. Will the 406 units get you found quicker? Yes, a little bit, but frankly, once searchers get in the general area, they're going to rely on the 121.5 signal to actually FIND you anyway.

So, this gentleman's point is that the ACTIVATION device, ie: the G switch on these beacons is the same old piece of junk that's been installed on 121.5 beacons forever.

Have you ever heard of an accident where the beacon didn't activate? I sure have. In fact, the activation rate on ELT's is around 50 % or less, which is abysmal, and lowers our chances of being found immensely. That is purely and simply a function of an activation switch system that is terrible.

The point is that the 406 technology is purely useless if you happen to own one of that 50% or greater that fail to activate because of a switch that has proven again and again that it is almost useless.

What this gentleman is saying is that, before we require everyone to spend $1500 + on a new ELT, we ought to FIX the activation mechanism so that it is at least reliable.

And, I can't agree more. The manufacturers are not improving the odds at all that these things will activate. All they're doing is making life a little easier for RCC and the CAP.

That's not a bad thing, but I'm not going to saddle up that much money for that purpose.

There is simply NO excuse for these G switches to be so unreliable, in my opinion.

Look at the accident statistics and the numbers of ELT activations....

Buy a 406 beacon, and the thing is just as likely as not to fail to activate if something bad happens. In fact, the odds are precisely the same as the 121.5 beacons.

File a flight plan, leave specific information at home, carry a PLB, use a SPOT, or whatever.

But, for now, there's no way I'll buy a 406 ELT till they improve the G Switches.

MTV

Mike,

Good point about the activation failure, but I don't think this statement is quite true

mvivion said:

For years, any time a 121.5 beacon went off, it was almost always found in a timely manner. There was, and is, nothing wrong with 121.5, and 406 has only one significant advantage:

Click to expand...

In fact the 406 Mhz signal, even without any extra coded information, allows a more precise position determination by satellites. I don't know all the details but in general a higher frequency allows more precise positioning. this is one of the reasons that military GPS receivers are able to resolve a better position than civil receivers using the C/A code, because they are making measurements from a higher frequency encoded signal. THis is alos why survey grade receivers are able to acheive a more precise position than military receivers, because thy are making measurements based not on a modulated code, but the carrier wave itself which is higher frequency/shorter wavelength than either the c/a code or the secure precise code.

Yes, that's correct, and there are other advantages to the 406 system, for example that they will actually start a search with just one ELT hit, which they didn't do with the 121.5 system.

There's no doubt there are advantages to the 406 system.

But it's like creating the greatest, super duper technology, but requiring it to be activated by a stone age switch, with a terrible failure rate.

I am not knocking the 406 system. The SYSTEM has all kinds of advantages.

But the point this gent makes is that for that wonderful system to actually function as designed, the G Switch has to work, and nobody has improved the reliability of that switch, to the best of my knowledge.

The switches need to be improved. I presume nobody wants to tackle that, cause they'll have to deal with the FAA in spades on certification issues. Then again, maybe someone is working on it. I sure hope so, cause with those switches, the accuracy of the signal becomes a moot point in a very large percentage of accidents.

And, you can derive all the benefits of the 406 system by carrying a PLB with GPS capability, a feature that none of the lower end ELT's offers as yet. Of course, the PLB requires that you activate it manually.

Which is probably more reliable than the G Switch on the ELT.

For now, until they improve the performance of those switches, I'll still use a 121.5 ELT and carry a SPOT and PLB. I figure that gives me better odds than the 406 ELT with a crappy switch.

MTV