FCC ELT Rule A Bad Joke?

AVweb used to run an April Fool's edition that was popular but ultimately confusing. As Internet news evolved, our reputation as a trusted source of accurate information about GA conflicted with the devil-may-care attitude that governed some sites.I only took part in one of the April 1 editions and it was a challenge coming up with stories that had a ring of truth but were obviously bogus. One aviation site continues to do this but it's become tedious.Well, it's a long way from April 1 and the FCC handed us a masterpiece of contradictory and ridiculous proposed rulemaking that would have rated the lead story in our more playful era. The Federal Communications Commission says it's going to outlaw the use of 121.5 ELTs by August.Huh?Does that mean that if you don't crash and set off your FAA-legal 121.5 ELT you're OK: nobody is going to snip your rabbit ears?This is such rich territory for an editorial piece that restraint is in order or we'll be here all day.There was no consultation and it simply cannot happen in time to keep everyone legal. It would probably take two years just to supply the 300,000 or more 406 ELTs the FCC says should replace the 121.5s. And what about the 406s that also do 121.5?The relative merits of such a simplistic approach to using available technology to find crashed airplanes also must wait for another blog.In this case, there are only two possible scenarios.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/insider/fcc-elt-rule-a-bad-joke

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