Back in the day, ELT's would broadcast on 121.5 only (assuming that the antenna wasn't severed in the crash
). Typically, we'd get a call from Colorado Springs SAR about a satellite hit and a very general location based on doppler shift (GPS had been invented but wasn't a thing yet). The mission pilot would eventually get a call via an elaborate phone tree and we'd start a search grid using a LORAN console in the aircraft (Cessna 172XP) and a standard direction finder to triangulate the signal once we acquired (
if we acquired it).It was generally fun, and often boring, as is often typical of mission-based flying. We never did get called for an actual crash, but I recall the frustration of fiddling with the direction finder to track ELTs that were traveling around in the trunk of a car.
It was
a lot of flying at Air Force expense and mostly a lot of fun. Nice equipment. Today, that squadron flies a brand new Cessna 182 with a truly awesome avionics suite. I confess to being a little jealous.