How Not to Register an ELT & Avoiding a Registration Mess

By J. Roger Foster

The article, “How Not to Register an ELT”, is an account of several ELT registrations that had problems, one of which went from bad to worse to hopeless.

“Avoiding a Registration Mess”, is a discussion on how to avoid getting into the mess described in “How Not to Register an ELT”. The article covers the basic registration process, four types of registrations that may be encountered, a discussion of ELT testing procedures, and has a reference section.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Roger Foster
• Release date: Aug 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301246649

J. Roger Foster

J. Roger Foster has ten years experience as an avionics technician in general, business and commercial aviation. He has worked as a contractor in the avionics and systems engineering department for an airline. His current employer is AFTA (Avionics Field Teams Associates) which provides staff engineering support for owner/operators.

Book preview

How Not to Register an ELT

&

Avoiding a Registration Mess

Rev. 5

by

J. Roger Foster

How Not to Register an ELT, Rev. 5

Avoiding a Registration Mess, Rev. 5

Introduction • A Brief Description of the Registration Process

Various Situations That Might Come Up

Case 1 • Case2 • Case3 • Case 4

Problematic Concerns

Maintenance References • Why You Won’t Get Test Equipment & What Might Happen

ELT Testers and Testing Procedures • Company Registration Procedures

Conclusion

References That Might be Useful

About the Author

Copyright 2013 by Jonathan Foster

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please send them the link. The author would prefer that they download their own copy.

Record of Revisions

Rev. 1, dated August 18, 2013:

•Add Case 3: The airplane changes hands, but the tail number stays the same.

Rev. 2, dated July, 23 2014:

•Correct references and links to 47 Code of Federal Regulations 87.199.

•Clean up and correct formatting.

•Verify and update links.

•Update FAA N-number reference.

•Change License Notes.

•Update information for Beacon Message Decode Program.

•Grammar and typo corrections

•Change internal hyperlinks

Rev. 3, dated October 9, 2014

•Minor language changes

•Rewrite and update section on ELT Testers and Testing Procedures

Rev. 4, dated Jan. 22, 2015

•Add information on Location Protocols in Brief Description of the Registration Process

Rev. 5, dated July 15, 2015

•Deleted introductory Description and Excerpts and Author’s Note

•Minor changes and additions to Avoiding a Registration Mess

How Not to Register an ELT, Rev. 5

by

J. Roger Foster

The following incident really happened – more or less. Names have been eliminated and circumstances changed to protect any idiots involved.

A certain Company had a fleet of airplanes and had problems registering the ELTs (Emergency Locator Transmitters) on three of them. It fell to an individual with the opaque, uninformative title of Avionics Engineering Liaison to fix the problem. The liaison wasn’t enthusiastic about the assignment for several reasons. For one thing, he was busy and had better things to do. Also, he didn’t have a very good understanding of the ELT registration process and knew it. The last reason was that he didn’t even know what ELT systems were on the airplanes. This meant a search in Records. Past experience in Records suggested he would have an easier time finding the Minotaur in the Labyrinth – with better results.

Right off the bat, he was told that the ELT on