Personal Locator Beacon

If Carl does decide to sell his PLB then he will place an Ad in the classifieds so that this thread does not become moderated for "For Sale/Wanted" .

Regards
The ModSquad

Hi Stephen

Its great to mention the registration and sticker. Just one small point. The beacon isn't useless if its not registered, it will still work and we still get the data from the satellite. But we don't know who it is and quite often where you are. Being registered saves us a heap of resources.

On my last shift I had 6 beacons detected in Australia. 5 Registered of which 4 were false alarms and we resolved them in around 15 Minutes after calling the names on the registration details.

The 6th one, unregistered, has gone off three times this month, for only a couple of minutes and satellite has been unable to get a position. A bit frustrating.

Hi Anotherone

I know that they will still work, but I thought that they must be registered. I have heard of one person being fined when their boat were inspected, yes they had the PLB, but because it did not display a current valid ID label, they were fined.

Is this true, or just another made up story.


Cheers


Stephen

Anotherone

I bet that frustrating isn't the half of it. No wonder by the time a valid emergency exists some staff are a but lazy (bad word to use) about it. A bit like the boy who cried wolf. I heard that they are still finding them at Mugga lane tip. Why are people so keen not to do the right thing and dispose of things properly.

This is another reason we got the satellite phone. And I tested it to the centre in Canberra. At least we cannot trigger a false alarm easily. Not that we want to anyway.

Phil

Strange ours is registered but we have never recieved a sticker, I just print out the registration summary and keep that with the beacon; it has all the details on it. :))

Stephen

For boating if you are required by law to carry a distress beacon (as per state rules such as how far you can go offshore) you actually have to carry an EPIRB a PLB doesn't meet the requirements. Epirbs float upright and have longer battery life. Crews in yacht races can carry PLBs though.

The while stickers. These are issued by amsa on behalf of the states and casa. Its an easy way for water police to check if your epirb is registered if you are legally required to. PLBs get the stickers for so those used for aircraft and for the yachties can show its registered.

I'm guessing (because I'm not police) that if you got a safety check and your beacon didn't have a sticker then assumption was that it wasn't registered. I'm guessing the person could always go back and try and get the charge dropped if they were registered - but I don't really know how that works.

If you do not have a legal requirement to carry a distress beacon - ie don't go far offshore (depending on state regs) or you use it for hiking, offroading ect you do not have to register it - but we encourage it because of the benefits.

For interest there are 220 000 beacons registered on our database and the guess is that nearly 30 per cent of distress beacons remain unregistered

I don't think I explained the state requirements for boaties very well - this link is better :) Beacon State Requirements

Effie C
I think that is because stickers were not always issued for PLBs, So you may have registered it before stickers were used. If you want one just give them a call or email in working hours and the team that manages the database can arrange it. Otherwise you should get one on your next 2 year anniversary for registration as it is also a trigger to get users to check their details.

Anotherone, do you also handle Spot assistance? I understand that SPOT US calls some Australian Authority. I am wondering if you know how that would work, or IF that would work?


regards

Boobook

For Spot we have an MOU with them that we are the single point of contact in Australia for responding to the 911 alerts. Before the MOU they would try and contact different states or organisations.
Essentially, if a 911 spot alert comes up in our area, they call us. They continue to tack down info about the owner and we coordinate a search.
We don't endorse them and don't do any quality control on their system.

My registered PLB has followed me to Fiji for 2 years and I have told them that it is here.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 Motorhome