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I been wondering about these devices,Since the other night my Fire Dept and about 4 other dept about 100 people,were alerted to a distress signal in a deep hollow. As we were setting up the command past and such we were told the coords moved to another location and so on for over 21 hours.

we finally figured out the distress signal was coming from a retail outfit ,which of course the earlier shift said all units was not set up and found out later one unit did go off.

I was wondering how the accuracy of these units are in a more remote area. It was funny that all the coords we was getting from a govt sources and setting them in the gps units were way off and the coords kepted moving.

I am no way knocking these devices,but I think there should be a quicker way of getting a faster fix and accurate fix on these units, If it was a true emergency,things might of not gone well. I also don't know if its the equipment we had to track the signal had problems,or the lack of training,or if the satilites were malfunctioning.

I was seriousily thinking about one of these devices,but after the other night,I am kinda of hesitant.
The Corspas Sarsat Satellite System using the LEOSTAR satellites are accurate to a two mile radius in about an hour. Then a 121.5 Mhz signal is given off to help the SAR team find the victim quickly. If it has a GPS built into it, it should be 5 minutes within a 100 mile radius, that is if it can obtain a GPS signal.

The ACR PLB is designed to work on either, except for the Terrafix I which only uses the Cospas Sarsat Satellites for location. All of their units gives off 5W of power compared to 0.6W being received by a GPS and/or other units (ie. SPOT) that use GPS entirely for receiving and transmitting. Depending on the interference of the building it was in (metal roof, other barriers that would interfere with the signal), this may have been the problem. In this situation a GPS wouldn't even pick up one satellite.

This leads me to my question: What exactly was the make of the unit? Was it an ACR PLB or something else?
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