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I imagine that if they floated they would be carried far out of the way of the crash scene and thus much more difficult to find.
by rossriley 17y ago
I imagine that if they floated they would be carried far out of the way of the crash scene and thus much more difficult to find.
- rbanffy 17y agoThat's why they have radio beacons
- gvb 17y agoNo, no radio beacons. If they are on land, an exhaustive search finds them. For underwater search, they have battery powered "pinger" beacons. That is the cylindrical item in the picture on the Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grossi-7.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grossi-7.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box
- rbanffy 17y agoWow! Why no radio beacon?
- gvb 17y agoThe aircraft itself has a radio beacon that self-activates on a crash. Having one on the black box would be redundant and very likely ineffective since the black box is buried in the guts of the aircraft (e.g. if it separates enough to have a clear field of view for transmitting, it is probably going to be too damaged to transmit). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Position-Indicating_Radio_Beacon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Position-Indicating_R... The ELT is to locate the debris field. (OK, it is officially to locate the survivors, but they tend to be in the debris field.) If the crash is on land, another radio to locate the black box is unnecessary. If it is in the water, a radio transmitter is useless, but a pinger is very useful (see other debate threads why floating black boxes aren't a good idea, and impractical to boot - the armor is very heavy).