Aircraft Emergency Locator Transmitters...

🔍 Key Concepts

• Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) are used on aircraft, not ships, but mariners are expected to recognize their distress frequencies • Older aviation distress beacons used two VHF frequencies related to marine/aviation distress • Modern satellite alerting for ELTs involves a 406 MHz signal received by COSPAS-SARSAT satellites

💭 Think About

• Which of these frequencies are traditionally associated with manned voice distress and homing (civilian and military)? • Which frequency in the list is specifically used for modern digital satellite alerting of distress beacons (EPIRBs, PLBs, and ELTs)? • Think about how older ELTs were designed versus newer 406 MHz ELTs—what combination of frequencies would make sense for both local homing and satellite detection?

✅ Before You Answer

• Identify which options include both the traditional distress/homing frequencies and the modern 406 MHz satellite alerting frequency • Eliminate any option that contains only the old analog distress frequencies without 406 MHz • Confirm that the choice you pick matches what you’ve heard about newer 406 MHz ELTs and how SAR (search and rescue) units home in on them using 121.5 MHz

Aircraft Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT) operate on what frequencies?

121.5 MHz.

243 MHz.

121.5 and 243 MHz.

121.5, 243 and 406 MHz.