Aided by Capt. Jim Dunn of the Andrews Composite Squadron, former Cadet Airman Katarina Gathro digs an EPIRB out of the muck of a private landfill in Fairfax County, Va.
(Photo by Maj. Paul Cianciolo)
Kristi Carr
National Headquarters
Now it’s there. Now it isn’t.
Time goes by and the signal goes off again. Civil Air Patrol’s National Capital Wing ground team refocuses to trace the source of the Emergency Position Indication Radio Beacon, or EPIRB
After three days of this on-again/off-again game, the team finally pinpoints the signal. It’s coming from a Georgetown townhouse. Even then, the location doesn’t make sense -- EPIRBs are the type of beacons used by marine craft, and there is no water in sight.
In front of the townhouse all is quiet; no signal now. Then the garage door goes up and there it is again — the signal! It turns out the townhouse owner is storing his boat, equipped with an overactive, very directional EPIRB, in his basement garage.
The EPIRB signal can only be picked up when the garage door is raised and the receiving satellite is properly aligned. The CAP team turns off the signal and the mystery is solved.
Capital challenges
While the National Capital Wing does not get many calls resulting in rescues, the calls the wing does receive — requesting searches for transmitting beacons — are sure to be interesting, with their own special challenges.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, airspace over the nation’s capital has been restricted. That means tracking distress signals is done now mostly by ground crews traveling in a van stocked with a computer, GPS and mapping software — National Geographic’s topographical maps are favorites.
With the right code words to the right offices, “CAP continues to have authorization to put a plane up, but we try not to do it unless absolutely necessary. We don’t want to wear out our welcome in these sensitive times,” said Lt. Col. Mark Bailey, director of operations for the National Capital Wing.
Washington’s urban environment also presents a whole host of issues when it comes to tracking beacon signals.
“Radio signals from the beacons bounce through subway tunnels and off the many buildings,” said Maj. Paul Cianciolo, wing director of public affairs. “Even getting the van through some of the narrow, centuries-old streets can be a problem.”
Also, in a fairly compact space, the D.C. area contains marinas, airports, cityscapes and undeveloped land, many times in close proximity to one another. That means a distress signal could very likely emanate from any of the three types of beacons — EPIRBs on marine craft, ELTs (Emergency Locator Transmitters) on aircraft or PLBs (Personal Locator Beacons) on individuals.
Finally, in a government center like the capital, a CAP team may have to seek permission to enter a government building, including discerning which agency is in charge at any particular location. Teams have been allowed on the roofs of many office buildings to get above the signals to get a better reading.
Cianciolo recalls, “One building we came across was owned by the Secret Service, which had to contact its supervisors to let us in,” Cianciolo recalled.
“Yes,” he said, “finding a transmitting beacon in D.C. can be a real scavenger hunt.”
Who Is in charge?
In 1996, after going to higher ground — in this case, the steps of the Capitol -- CAP traced a distress signal to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.
Arriving at the museum in the middle of the night, the CAP team explained the situation to a posted Army guard. The guard contacted his command, but word also went out to D.C.’s 27-odd police agencies.
About half sent patrol units, lights whirling and blazing. “We had to explain ourselves to so many different agencies that I literally ran out of business cards!” Bailey said.
Again, there was no emergency, but rather an ELT that had been erroneously activated inside a Navy helicopter on display at the museum during Public Service Recognition Week.
During a different mission, the U.S. Park Police pulled over a CAP team and wound up offering its own helicopter to aid in a search once the team explained its mission.
Oops!
When a beacon is activated in the Washington area, its signal is picked up by a satellite. In turn, the satellite alerts various agencies on the ground, including the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, which notifies CAP to initiate a search.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, also receives all distress signals from satellites, so imagine CAP’s surprise when, in the late 1990s, one of its searches led its team right back to the NOAA ground station. After peeling back the layers, CAP discovered NOAA had been given a window of time for testing a new ELT device; NOAA personnel, however, went home that evening, forgetting to deactivate the ELT.
“It was like being a fireman and having your fire station burn down — a little embarrassing,” Bailey said.
Then again, he said, a beacon’s signal is inaudible, so the fact a beacon has been activated can easily go unnoticed.
That might explain why the National Capital Wing once found the object of their hunt — a transmitting beacon — on the desk of the commandant of the Coast Guard!
Transmitting ‘The Today Show’?
Sometimes a signal is not even a signal. A couple years ago, CAP narrowed its search to the area of the Bolling Air Force Base and discovered the Joint Defense Air Operations Center had a radio transmitting on the beacon frequency.
Another time, the beacon frequency was broadcasting the lineup from a local NBC affiliate. Once the problem was made known to the TV station, their engineers resolved it.
Rescuing people or hunting objects, CAP is ready
“A lot of beacons are set off accidentally,” Cianciolo conceded, “but we treat every one as an emergency.”
“One of our most recent distress missions was a year ago when we assisted with a downed plane on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border,” said Capt. Joe Gleason, emergency services officer for the Andrews Composite Squadron and often its ground team leader or “ground-pounder.”
“We practice traditional search and rescue all the time, so we’re ready to help if needed in a post-disaster environment or missing aircraft search.” Gleason added.
Cianciolo said, “Our ground teams are getting very good at tracking down distress signals bouncing around D.C.’s urban environments. On average, we find beacons fairly fast, sometimes within an hour of the mission’s start.”
Even so, the hope is the National Capital Wing continues to have more scavenger hunts and fewer rescue missions.
Other parts of the country have their own wacky beacon stories. As reported in CAP News Online in April, the Texas Wing’s Delta Composite Squadron was dispatched to find the source of a distress signal. Coming up empty-handed on boats or downed aircraft, Maj. Bob Beeley and Capt. John Clarke asked a man in the indicated neighborhood if he knew of anyone nearby with a large craft. He couldn’t help them there, but did tell them how his wife had recently brought home some nautical decorations from Galveston. A trip to the backyard yielded two EPIRBs floating in the family pool. The man’s wife had turned on one of them to see the light on top blink. The light didn’t work, but the transmitter did!