121.5 EPIRBs Go the Way of the Dinosaur
You can still play those old LPs if you want, and by all means restore that old Herreshoff schooner. But as of February 1, that ancient 121.5 EPIRB of yours will not only be useless, it will be illegal.
EPIRBs — Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons — are nifty gadgets. Modeled on a similar device carried by small aircraft, when turned on they emit a radio signal that informs anyone listening that you’re in trouble, and where to look for you. EPIRBs have saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of lives over the years. But the early ones, which transmitted on the 121.5 MHz band, were glitchy. They produced a lot of false alarms and had a host of other limitations that included poor signal strength, search areas that could be as large as 12 to 15 miles in radius, and unreliability. (Back in the ‘80s, Latitude sponsored an EPIRB reliability test that revealed a significant number of units were emitting a signal so distorted that they might never have been heard in the first place.) This resulted in the Coast Guard spending valuable time trying to make sure the signal and position were real before launching its boats or helicopters. And they still went on lots of wild goose chases.
About 20 years ago, some brilliant fellow invented a new breed of EPIRB that transmitted digitally on the 406 MHz band. Digital signals, and the way satellites process them, are not only highly accurate, but each individual EPIRB could have its own ‘fingerprint’. When preregistered, that meant it could instantly inform searchers with the name of the boat, home port, contact numbers and so on. When one of those goes off, the Coasties make a few quick calls to the numbers on the registration. If the person on the other end says her husband really did leave for Hawaii a few days before, they go. If she says he’s driving up 101 with the EPIRB bouncing around in the back of a pickup truck, they don’t.
The ‘con’ of 406s is that they are expensive. Prices have come down in the last few years, but you’ll still shell out from $300 for small personal EPIRBs to $600 or more for the newest water-activated models that feature built-in GPS. So people have continued using the 121.5 models. But as of February 1, they can’t anymore. On that day, Cospas-Sarsat, the international satellite-based search and rescue (SAR) system, will cease satellite processing of 121.5/243 MHz analog EPIRBs and will begin processing only the 406 MHz digital radio beacon signals. Use of the obsolete 121.5 MHz (or 243MHz for airplanes) beacons will be illegal, as well as pointless, since nobody will be listening anymore.
We hope by next month that all sailors venturing offshore will be carrying 406 EPIRBs. And if you find a bargain on a used one, be sure to re-register it in your name!
For more information on EPIRBs and the Cospas-Sarsat program, visit www.sarsat.noaa.gov.