This doesn't happen much now that the SARSATs have stopped listening to 121.5-only ELTs and the 406 ones have an ID. We've had people who trip their ELT, and the monitoring guys call you and say, "Hey, are you OK? Your ELT is going off."
I got a call last Wednesday from the USAF (the airport number at our field goes to my phone). There's an unregistered ELT going off on our field. Hmm... I look out at the runway. No apparent crashed airplanes. I whip out my handheld, and sure enough, there's one going off. I told them I'd get people to hunt for it at our end. They proceed to activate the CAP guys to help. Further confusing things is the power has gone out in the neighborhood (did someone hit powerlines).
I sent out an email to all our owners asking people to check their ELTs (amusing, we have a couple of non-pilot owners, one of which wrote back asking how they do that). We quickly got a group of four or five people out on golf carts (and, in my case, my e-bike) hunting. We eventually find it and turn it off. I called the AF back and let them know all is well (confirming the ID of the one we've discovered and shutoff is indeed the one they were looking for). A while later, they called back and asked for the contact information of the ELT owner so they could put his phone in the database in case this happened again. I'd already provided the N number.
The owner says he thought he'd registered it. But it was a homebuilt, and he might have missed that detail.
Ended up the local CAP commander was a friend. He was getting ready to launch an aerial search and send the cadets over to the field to DF for us. Had to let them down that there was nothing to hunt for.
I got a call last Wednesday from the USAF (the airport number at our field goes to my phone). There's an unregistered ELT going off on our field. Hmm... I look out at the runway. No apparent crashed airplanes. I whip out my handheld, and sure enough, there's one going off. I told them I'd get people to hunt for it at our end. They proceed to activate the CAP guys to help. Further confusing things is the power has gone out in the neighborhood (did someone hit powerlines).
I sent out an email to all our owners asking people to check their ELTs (amusing, we have a couple of non-pilot owners, one of which wrote back asking how they do that). We quickly got a group of four or five people out on golf carts (and, in my case, my e-bike) hunting. We eventually find it and turn it off. I called the AF back and let them know all is well (confirming the ID of the one we've discovered and shutoff is indeed the one they were looking for). A while later, they called back and asked for the contact information of the ELT owner so they could put his phone in the database in case this happened again. I'd already provided the N number.
The owner says he thought he'd registered it. But it was a homebuilt, and he might have missed that detail.
Ended up the local CAP commander was a friend. He was getting ready to launch an aerial search and send the cadets over to the field to DF for us. Had to let them down that there was nothing to hunt for.