1. Minnesota Wing Air Branch Director Course
121.5 MHz SAR without SARSAT
Minnesota Wing Air Branch Director Course

2. Overview Information you will get Possible approaches Results so far
Other things to consider

3. Information you will get
Mission Number
Airborne reports
Airborne report search areas are huge compared to SARSAT data.
From 3,000’, a radius of 68 NM is possible.
From 30,000’, that radius could be 200 NM.
SARSAT average accuracy: NM.
AFRCC may have contacted several airports to check for signals on the ramp and may provide that info.

4. Possible Approaches Get an aircraft up if at all possible!
Aircraft can cover a lot more ground in attempting to troll for signal.
Even IFR sorties at high altitude can help narrow down the signal.
They just need to get the ground team close enough to pick up a signal.

5. Possible Approaches If you have a large area, launch multiple aircraft
Ensure you have some sort of separation protocol in place.

6. Possible Approaches
If you can not launch an aircraft, deploy several ground teams to start doing ramp checks and “trolling for signal”.
This type of search will be extremely difficult.
Continue to ask for more airborne reports at as low of an altitude as possible to hopefully help narrow down the area.

7. Results so far: Two searches from airborne reports since 1 Feb 2009:
First was “6 Airborne reports with lowest being 9 miles north of Faribault at 6000 ft”
Weather was a possible issue.
Ground teams from Mankato, Red Wing, 130th were preparing to do ramp checks.
Did break enough for an aircrew out Lakeville to launch and pick up the signal near Owatonna Airport.
MKT ground team diverted there and signal was silenced.
Total Flight Time: 1.5

9. Results so far: Two searches from airborne reports since 1 Feb 2009:
Second was “11 airborne reports of an ELT 10 mi NE of St Cloud”
Ended up being at Leaders Field
MIC aircrew heard it when they flew over en route to St Cloud.
Directed STC ground team into the site.
Total flight time: 1.7 hours

11. Other Considerations
Searches will take longer. Will probably need to get more personnel involved to handle the larger search areas.
May need more mission staff if the mission goes into multiple operational periods.
Training needs to be modified
Airborne reports and much less accurate data to start the search.

12. Questions?