[BC] Digital TV dispatches UK coastguard

[Paul Smith W4KNX]

The signals would have to have been on the distress freq's of 121.5, 243.00
and 406.00 Mhz.  Some mixing somewhere would have caused it to be picked up
by SarSat and dispatched to the Coast Guard.  As a member of the Civil Air
Patrol, and their electronic DF specialist, I've found that boats are the
biggest problem with what's called an EPIRB, which is a distress radio
normally on life jackets.  I've traced them to garages, marinas, backs of
moving cars etc.  But there have been times I've found mariners in distress
and 2 downed airplanes.  It would be curious to know what freq the set top
box would have been on.  406 Mhz ones also give specific info as to what the
device is thats going off.  My guess is that it could be 243.00. Coming from
the converter box the box could be tuned to a VHF HI channel and have mixing
problems with an IF freq somewhere.


Paul Smith
Sarasota, FL

-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net]On Behalf Of Chris Gebhardt
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 3:42 PM
To: broadcast at radiolists.net
Subject: [BC] Digital TV dispatches UK coastguard


From:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060215/od_nm/britain_digibox_dc

LONDON (Reuters) - Lifeboats and a helicopter scoured the sea to track
down an electronic distress signal -- only for coastguards to discover
it came from a British retiree's faulty digital television box on dry land.

The coastguards were scrambled after a rescue coordination center in
Scotland picked up what it believed to be a distress signal coming from
the sea off southern England.

But communications experts later traced the signal to the digital
television set-top box in the home of 67-year-old Mary Donaldson in the
western town of Plymouth.