Take care when you clean up your boat!

[catseven]

I believe the following was published on the Glasgow Sunday mail site.........anyone else seen it? Must have had some good batteries!

Aug 27 2006

EXCLUSIVE: Jets, lifeboats and coastguard hunt for SOS in rubbish skip

By Charles Lavery


A YACHTSMAN sparked a major air-sea rescue operation after his wife threw an old distress beacon in a bin.

A satellite, two coastguard stations, Prestwick Airport, the 12-strong crews of two lifeboats and even airliners joined in the hunt for David Macklin.

They feared he was in trouble off the west coast of Scotland - somewhere between Oban and Lochgilphead.

But David was on dry land all the time as the beacon he thought was broken was flashing out SOS signals from a skip.

David and his wife Janet, of Exeter, had been clearing out their yacht at Ardfern Marina, Argyll, when they decided to throw out the 18-year-old emergency device.

Janet dumped it in a skip but it went off and the signal was picked up by satellite.

It sparked a massive rescue operation costing tens of thousands of pounds.

A signal-receiving base in Cornwall alerted Falmouth Coastguard who pinpointed the source to somewhere between Oban and the island of Islay.

Clyde Coastguard HQ at Greenock were contacted and ordered Oban and lay's lifeboats to sea.

The coastguard also contacted Prestwick air traffic control to ask their transatlantic pilots for help in pinning the signal down. Passenger jets crossing to the USA picked up the signal and narrowed down the search area.

When the lifeboats turned up at Ardfern they discovered the signal was coming from dry land.

Crewman David Isaac, 27, went ashore to investigate and met Mr Macklin coming out of the marina's toilet to see what all the fuss was about. When he heard about the signal, he realised what had happened and took the life boatman to the skip where the beacon was beeping.

Oban lifeboat skipper Ronnie MacKillop, 31, said: "We had the Islay lifeboat out well to the north of its base and the Oban one well to the south.

"That left two large areas without cover for a genuine emergency."

Mr Macklin declined to comment.

SUNDAY EMAIL

c.lavery@sundaymail.co.uk

 

[Bergman]

"A signal-receiving base in Cornwall alerted Falmouth Coastguard who pinpointed the source to somewhere between Oban and the island of Islay."

They must use bloody big pins in Falmouth.

I would have thought it was a 121MHz jobby at that age, but thats not satellite band.

Find it hard to believe a 121MHz signal in West of Scotland was detectable in Cornwall

If they could not really pinpoint it when stationary on land what use would it have been at sea?

Strange tale altogether.

 

[AlistairC]

121 is picked up by satellite but not the geostationaries, so you have to wait for a low orbit satellite to pass overhead.
They use the doppler shift of the signal to get a position (as the satellite is moving in respect to the target), so I think that level of accuracy is reasonable in the circumstances - they may pinpointed it more precicely using data from a second satellite pass.

 

[TargaLout]

This may help ??
web page

 

[snowleopard]

I had a similar experience last year that was forunately a little less embarrassing. When laying up I decided to test my epirb. The procedure is to push the operating switch to the 'test' position; it should then show a series of red flashes followed by one pulse of the strobe. Everything worked fine but about 20 mins later I got a call from Falmouth CG on my mobile to ask if I was in trouble.

If I hadn't had my mobile there they would presumably have sent out lifeboats etc.

If anyone out there has a Tron 406 epirb - beware!

It is now due to go in the skip because a replacement battery costs almost as much as some new units. I'll be careful to remove the battery before throwing it out!

 

[machurley22]

I think this is probably the incident which DaveS and I (on different vessels) heard on Saturday 19th since there is no date mentioned in the report.

Clyde Coastguard broadcast a Mayday Relay on CH16 giving a fairly precise lat/long which I carefully copied down and was about to plot until they mentioned that this was in the vicinity of Ardfern Marina when it seemed obvious that it was an accidental activation of some kind. Presumably this was after an earlier period of greater uncertainty about the location.

We were a bit surprised to hear subsequently that both the Oban and Islay lifeboats had been tasked and assumed that they were looking for an excuse for an exercise on an otherwise quiet Saturday.

Even more surprised therefore to hear Ronnie McKillop's comments (at least in the way that that august publication, The Sunday Mail, has represented them) implying that this was a dangerous waste of the rescue services' resources.

 

[Bergman]

Thanks both for that

I never realised that 121Mhz could be detected by satellite.

You live and learn.