EPIRB

[charles]

[mimoza]

Only if you ditch or your boat sinks. And how often is that going to happen, really?

Seriously, GPS takes the "Search" out of "Search and Rescue." Need I say more? OK, just a little: Assuming you have it with you, a GPS enabled EPIRB transmits your current position along with your distress call. This can be important if you are drifting in adverse conditions [probable], and especially if you didn't manage to get out an SOS on the sideband with your last known position. A regular class ii simply transmits your distress call. I don't know why they even sell these anymore.

[mike]

I would go with what capt Bri says, without GPS the receiving station can only give your approx position to SAR which could leave them with quite a considerable area to search where a unit transmitting GPS information should hopefully pinpoint your position with good accuracy.

I would go one step further & buy a duel frequency unit i.e a 406 & 121, the 121 is used by SAR at close range to pinpoint your exact position, as far as I am aware SAR do not receive direct 406 transmissions which are satelite received, the informations being sent down to a shore based receiving station. SAR are sent to the position the receiving station has given them, 121mhz allows them to use a direction finder to pinpoint your postion.

mike

[mimoza]

[charles]

[mimoza]

[mike]

[warmrain]

[jonehaze]

I thought about just buying a new one. And its probably what the EPIRB makers would like. I'm stuborn though. I believe the other EPIRB story too. It scares me sometimes when I think of some of the noodles out here we trust to even touch an object like this. I had an A/B a few months back who was curious about the lever on our Billy Pugh lifering launcher. He's not curious anymore.

[warmrain]

Well, I could have just replaced the batteries myself I suppose... But I'm thinking... the cost of the batteries... and the effort to maintain a 15 year old device the size of a lunch pail... OR, for less money than the batteries alone I get a new device WITH a built in GPS.

I don't think ACR knows that I even thought about it and I don't personally care if they want be to buy a new on or not, it just made sense. This one is small enough for my pocket and will be carried with me. So... I get a 2nd one too for my wife to carry... and we do things with them we would never do with the lunch pail, carry them while hiking or skiing.

This year the FAA will require me to replace the 121.5 ELT (EPIRB) in the plane. AFAIK the 121.5 signal will still be used as a homing frequency in all current devices.

~Cars