Updated August 24, 2003, with information on new PLBs from Pains Wessex.
I was ferrying my antique open-cockpit biplane -- a rare Flaglor High Tow -- from my home base in Driggs, Idaho (just west of Jackson Hole) to the maintenance shop at Idaho Falls. That's about 45 nautical miles, which doesn't sound like much unless you're flying an open-cockpit airplane for a half-hour in sub-freezing, 6 a.m. temperatures.I started to think about what I'd do if the engine quit.The terrain below was rugged and sparse. There's not much civilization between Driggs and Idaho Falls, and the cellular coverage is spotty at best. If I had to make a forced landing, how long would it take before someone found me?I silently chastised myself for being in too much of a hurry to file a VFR flight plan. It sure would be reassuring, I thought, if I had one of the new 406-MHz Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) with me.Now I'm not a pessimist by nature, but I have had five engine failures over past 14 years, with one leading to a short-of-the-runway landing in Green Bay, Wis. Even though Green Bay is a large airport, the tower was closed and nobody realized I'd gone down. It was a good thing that the crash site was in an area of good cellular telephone coverage, because I had to notify local authorities via cellphone that our current location was 30 feet short of the runway threshold. By the time all the telephone calls were made by the local "authorities," it was a half-hour before the first rescue vehicle arrived.That's why I will be first in line to carry one of the new GPS-augmented PLBs as soon as they are approved for land-based use in the United States on July 1, 2003. In fact, I've already got one on order. Once it arrives, I don't plan to leave home without it. The new 406-MHz PLBs are small, economical, and amazing. One prominent expert on search and rescue remarked recently that they "take the search out of search and rescue."
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/taking-the-search-out-of-search-and-rescue