Check your AK 450 ELT

Bryan Wood · #1 12-18-2006, 06:43 PM

A co-worker was goofing around with a couple of ELT's and it caught my attention. Working for an airline I'm not used to seeing GA equipment at work so naturally seeing boxes full of GA ELT's surprised me. I guess they came on Airbus's and were mounted in the cockpit for the crews use but are now being replaced with 406mhz units. Whatever the reasons there are many, many ELTs and he was playing around with them.

With the ELT's in the armed position he would pick them up one at a time and make them level as he held them. Then in the direction of the arrow on the outside of the case that shows mounting direction he would slowly turn them down so that the arrow faced towards the floor. Some of these ELT's went off by gently pointing them down. Others had to be hit pretty hard to get the "G" switches to close simulating an impact and thus turning on the beacon. What impressed me was that several turned on without the impact to close the switches and how they could never live in an aerobatic airplane. I'm not implying anything about the quality of the units, just that it might be a good idea to check yours if you have one. JMHO

Best,

bsacks05 · #2 12-18-2006, 06:58 PM

I came across an interesting ELT story today.
I teach tech students at the Air Force museum here. We basically help maintain the static display aircraft. Corrosion prevention, damage repair, etc. Anyway, the museum decided to scrap its C141 and hired a salvage crew to come in and, with big metal crunching machinery, proceeded to chew it up on the spot and haul off the scrap over the course of a week. It was really neat to watch. One day they chewed into the aft fuselage enough to make the tail fall to the ground and, unknown to all involved, set off the ELT which was apparently still armed after all these years. The air force personnel on base finally narrowed down the source to somewhere on the museum grounds and, at 2am, upon seeing the tail on the ground, realized what happened.
I'm not sure who manufactured the unit, but the battery pack had not been inspected since 1985! The battery is a Lithium Silver Dioxide or something to that effect.

Hawkeye7A · #3 12-18-2006, 08:18 PM

There's a retired airline pilot in my EAA Chapter. This guy has well over 20,000 hours flying the big iron. A few years ago I agreed to let him use my C172 on occasion. My insurance policy then was pretty liberal; 300 hours total time with at least 10 hours time in type. On one Saturday I arrived at the airport to take my bird up as he had just rolled it back into the hangar after having taken his wife for a local jaunt. I pulled the plane back out of the hangar after the preflight walkaround, started her up, and after she was idling smoothly, began to turn on the avionics. When I brought up the Comm radios I heard a "Weeoooh, weeoooh, weeoooh" and realized the ELT was activated! I hit the reset, checked that the main unit was in the "armed" position(it was) and everything was fine.

I never let him fly my plane again. Apparently he didn't know you could land a Cessna much softer than a B757.

Low Pass · #4 12-19-2006, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hawkeye7A

There's a retired airline pilot in my EAA Chapter. This guy has well over 20,000 hours flying the big iron. A few years ago I agreed to let him use my C172 on occasion. My insurance policy then was pretty liberal; 300 hours total time with at least 10 hours time in type. On one Saturday I arrived at the airport to take my bird up as he had just rolled it back into the hangar after having taken his wife for a local jaunt. I pulled the plane back out of the hangar after the preflight walkaround, started her up, and after she was idling smoothly, began to turn on the avionics. When I brought up the Comm radios I heard a "Weeoooh, weeoooh, weeoooh" and realized the ELT was activated! I hit the reset, checked that the main unit was in the "armed" position(it was) and everything was fine.

I never let him fly my plane again. Apparently he didn't know you could land a Cessna much softer than a B757.

Interesting. I wonder if one of these new cargo tracking "black boxes" might help with loaning things like an airplane. For a couple-hundred bucks, supposedly these will give you all the acceleration, velocity and position info once downloaded to a PC. Would let you know just how your borrowed/rented equipment was being treated.