Crews looking for hoax signal

IT was either a hoax or an accident, but a helicopter and a Volunteer Marine Rescue (VMR) crew spent hours and thousands of dollars on Sunday trying to track down a signal from an out-of-date personal emergency beacon.

VMR public relations officer Bill Wagstaff said the duty radio operator at the base had detected the signal.

“The Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Canberra was informed and the AGL helicopter was tasked to overfly the area in an effort to track down the signal,” he said.

“The VMR duty crew was called in and the rescue boat was on standby.”

Mr Wagstaff said the situation was complicated because the signal came from a 121.5MHz EPIRB, which was not supposed to be carried on vessels in Queensland.

Since those EPIRBs are no longer tracked by satellite, the rescue crew could not pinpoint the signal.

The EPIRB could only be located if an aircraft with a tracker flew over it directly.

“We really have no way of knowing if it was a hoax or if somebody set it off deliberately,” Mr Wagstaff said.

“I’d like to think it was set off by accident, but like any emergency call, we have to treat it seriously and check it out.”

Mr Wagstaff said he could not estimate how much the fruitless search had cost.

“I don’t know how much it costs to run a helicopter, but it would be thousands of dollars an hour,” he said.

“We also had our volunteers with handheld trackers running around all over the place trying to find it.”

Mr Wagstaff said the weak and intermittent signal was eventually switched off.

He took the opportunity to remind boat owners the only EPIRB that could be legally carried was the 406MHz.

“Members of the boating public are again reminded that an EPIRB must be correctly stowed at all times and must only be tested as per the manufacturer’s instructions,” he said.

Mr Wagstaff said the new EPIRBs could be tracked to their owners because they had to be registered and each one had a unique number.

When a new EPIRB is activated, the first thing it sends out is its unique number.

“The satellite can also pinpoint its location,” he said.