It's useful to understand what happens between a crash and the final rescue. We discussed various scenarios with Major Chris Storey, Director of Public Affairs for the California Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, to develop the following sequence of events, all of which presume your ELT activates.rnIf it's a 121.5 MHz beacon, you wait, sometimes many hours or even days, for someone to hear it and report it to ATC. Often, ATC will query multiple aircraft to get an approximate location before acting on the report. If it's a 406 MHz unit, a satellite instantly picks its signal and passes the information through an automated relay station to a mission control center (MCC), operated by NOAA. Without GPS data, approximate location of the signal may take only minutes or as long as an hour.
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