If you want to sell someone a personal locator beacon
, have them read Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. These are the same events recounted in the book Alive, but told from a personal perspective. The author was on a flight from Uruguay to Chile in a chartered-from-the-military Fairchild turboprop with a service ceiling of 22,500′, i.e., barely high enough to clear the Andes and not high enough to fly over the weather. They were forced to set down in Mendoza, Argentina on the first day of the trip. On the second day, the pilots were pressured into continuing across the Andes in the afternoon by an Argentine law that prohibited foreign military planes from spending more than 24 hours in Argentina. The Andes are steep and windy, which produces severe turbulence and downdrafts on the lee side of the ridge. Sure enough, the plane was pushed down on the east side of a 17,000′ mountain ridge and came to rest at 12,000′ above sea level. There the survivors spent the next ten weeks until Parrado and a comrade climbed up the mountain and then down and west for 50 miles until reaching some Chilean peasants. Chilean Air Force helicopters ultimately were able to pull 14 additional survivors out of the crash site.
In an interview appended to the audio version of the book, Parrado says that the crash made him terribly afraid of flying. A friend with a single-engine airplane took him up and the fear began to melt away. Parrado ultimately earned a private pilot’s certificate and today flies all over the world on commercial airliners without fear.
Do you own a PLB? I’ve decided I’m not going into the backcountry again without one. It’s around 12 oz and $650 for the one you really want . Not to second guess him, because he sounded like a heck of a guy, but incidents like the Kim family ordeal http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/07/missing.family/index.html actually make me want to carry one on any significant road trip.
I do own a PLB. I carry it when going across unpopulated areas in the Robinson helicopters (the R44 doesn’t have any kind of ELT and the R22 only has the old-style 121.5 MHz one that everyone ignores). I also have a larger EPIRB that I bought for a trip down through the Caribbean in my old Diamond Star DA40.
I was stuck for a few days in the Alaska wilderness and it cured me forever of the desire to be utterly and completely on my own.
Miracle in the Andes was a great book and I read it several months ago. I have been wanted to read Alive for about 15 years and just started it last week. It’s very interesting to compare the very personal story by Nando Parrado that was both tempered and changed by over thirty years of reflection to the very journalistic “right after the fact” tale told in Alive. Both are great books, but very different. As a wildlife biologist, we carry satellite phones when working in extremely remote areas in Nevada but I often think PLBs would be a good thing to have with us. Filing a flight plan really helps, but it didn’t help the Andes survivor.
Just wanted to let you know you can rent a PLB for about $50/week. ACR is coming out with the MicroFix in February which weights 10oz and is 35% smaller than the Terrafix (the $650 12oz PLB mentioned above).
Kevin
Phil,
The PLB you mentioned would be a nice topic to discuss.
What kind do you have for your flying?
Although my R44 has the older-style ELT I’d like to purchase a more current model.
Would you elaborate on the one you bought for your heli x-country?
Thank you.
Mark
Mark: I have the ACR that is a bestseller at Amazon.com, though I bought it at Wings Pilot Shop in Nashua, NH. I didn’t do much research on different models, just like Charlie (owner of Wings) sell me one when I was buying charts for the cross-country trip. I think the ones that are hard-wired to the aircraft are down under $1000 now.