ELT Unit

Another can of worms.

FAA regs say you gotta have one if you read it the way I read it, but folks say you don't.

I'm told some FAA guys won't pass you if you don't have one and some will.  I've heard all kinds of answers on this and as a safety item I installed one anyway, it's the more is better thing again.

We live and play in the Smoky Mountains and chances are (99%) if we go down we'll end up under some trees and in a remote area and we want to have every edge we can have for rescue.  I know it adds weight, maintenance, and more expense to the ship but

personally I think you'd have to be short a couple bubbles not to have one.

In the very least your body would be recovered before the spring thaw and it might just be the thing that gets you help fast enough to save your life.

There was a guy that crashed in NC in 99 in a mini 500 they didn't find for days.  I don't know the extent of his injuries.  It was listed as a fatal crash from the information we saw but maybe, just maybe, if he had one he would be here reading this today.

This ELT unit also has the capability of voice transmission
but doesn't have a speeker nor does it come with a microphone.

Your supposed to use one of the ships headsets to when you use this feature but we had to be different and choose to use panel powered headsets that don't have the proper connectors so we will have to carry an extra mic stored on board for this if we ever plan on getting any use of the feature.

Mounting the main unit is pretty simple as you can see in the pics.

Installation was a real bugger until we figured where to locate this device

and a call to Tom Smith provided that information with the exception of the remote panel switch location.

That little remote switch was a real deal to locate in this little ship

with such a small instrument panel but we did it and are happy with the way it turned out because it's in our normal instrument scan and has reasonable access to engage the unit in the event we need to deploy it.  If you put it up top on the switch panel you can't see it because it's recessed, and if you locate it in the seatback or floorpan it becomes a dirt collector and would be a pain to keep clean.

We didn't want to run another antenna cable back to the rear of the ship

and more so then that we didn't want another hole in the top of our tail boom. You can see in the pics that we mounted the ELT antenna inside our passenger piller post. We made a small plate for the ground plane and also linked it to the passengers side kick plate. In the field strength tests we did it seems to work pretty good but it's not advised to do it this way.

 
Big note here for you guys that plan on trailering your ships as we do
you must disarm this unit while transporting your ship

to prevent it from possible activation from rough roads.  There has been some mention to us that if you do this you must make a note in the ships log but at this time we don't have any idea for sure.

Disarming the unit was proven to be a smart idea despite what folks have told us.  At John Spurling's Fly Inn in October 2001 we had an incident after we arrived and unloaded our ship.  We had pulled it over to the hanger with John's ATV and one of the  folks wandering around in the hanger noticed our ELT Alarm light was on.  We promptly turned it off and waited for the Civil Air Patrol to arrive but no one ever did lol.  We've no idea when or where it was set off. My first thoughts were it may have happened going through Arkansas because the roads were so rough but in final thoughts when we were pulling across the run way with the ATV it took a pretty sharp bump going over the edge of the runway.  Anyhow all that could have been avoided if we had only disarmed the unit in the first place which is what we do now. When we Do Disarm it we place a  8 1/2 X 11  placard in the cockpit floor reminding us to rearm it before flight. 

END