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A comment on SpareOne: Emergency mobile phone powered by AA batteries. Parent comment

Re:SpareOne: Emergency mobile phone powered by AA batteries by neurotech1 on Sunday May 15, 2016 @07:10PM (#11703213)
121.5 MHz is no longer satellite monitored for ELT/PLBs. That and its the VHF Aviation Emergency/Guard channel.

121.5 Mhz Emergency Channel is for aviation usage only (other than older PLBs) although if you had a multi-band handheld transceiver (in a genuine emergency) it would probably be useful to communicate with rescue helicopters etc.

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Re:SpareOne: Emergency mobile phone powered by AA batteries by anexprogrammer on Sunday May 15, 2016 @09:02PM (#11703614)
Hm.. Thought it had opened up to a more general guard emergency only freq when they added PLBs to it - SAR, coastguard etc.

I'm not current with aviation any more so the off the cuff thought could be very silly. :)

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Re:SpareOne: Emergency mobile phone powered by AA batteries by neurotech1 on Sunday May 15, 2016 @09:20PM (#11703666)
Not officially.

Using aviation channels for frivolous non-aviation uses can result in FAA/FCC/FBI getting involved.

The 121.5 beacon actually interferes with Emergency voice transmissions, so downed pilots sometimes shut them off in order to talk to rescue crews etc. without a beeping noise :)

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