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By Greg Bartlett

If you are a boater that routinely takes your craft offshore, you in all likelihood already know how important an EPIRB is for your safety. What you may not know is that the older analog units that operated on 121.5 MHz aren’t being monitored by satellite anymore.

As of 01 February 2009 the 121.5 MHz frequency is no longer monitored by satellite. The amount of false signals that were generated by these units along with the advanced digital technology of the 406 MHz units currently available caused the 121.5 MHz units to become obsolete.

If you are a boater and have one of the older EPIRB units, you need to replace it immediately. You have grown to know and appreciate the safety that your EPIRB provides you. The knowledge that should you be capsized by a rogue wave, suffer engine failure or strike an object in the water is less worrisome since help is readily available to you through your EPRIB.

The new 406 MHz EPIRB units on the market today should be registered when they are acquired. There is no charge for the registration for these units. When the unit is registered, data includes name address phone number, vessel type and an on shore contact. The state of the art 406 MHz units also contain GPS tracking data in their signal when they are activated. This GPS data aids SAR teams to narrow down the area to be searched. Also included in many of these modern units is a low power 121.5 MHz transmitter, which aids in location by SAR teams who use radio triangulation to precisely determine the location of the EPRIB.

If you are a boater who has grown accustomed to the knowledge that you have an EPIRB on your boat, you need to upgrade your EPIRB to a 406 MHz unit. While the 121.5 MHz signals from the older EPIRB units is no longer monitored by satellite, land based and aircraft will continue to monitor for those signals. You got your EPIRB for a reason. That reason was the safety of both yourself and those on your boat. To insure complete safety should a mishap happen, it’s time to upgrade your EPIRB unit to a new modern, state of the art 406 MHz unit.

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Perhaps while you were out celebrating Presidents’ Day on Monday, you attempted to use an old cell phone or access the OnStar system in your vehicle only to find that it didn’t work. Did you wonder why, or did you just chalk it up to the fact that technology just isnt’perfect?

There is a very good explanation as to why those devices and others that are still using an analog network didn’t function properly: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told carriers they could give analog networks the boot to make way for more and more digital services. If you have been using a cell phone or tracking system that is on an analog network, you probably realized that you were left out in the cold, as Monday was the last day to use many of these analog networks.

You’ve probably heard a lot about how people with older television sets will not be able to use those sets anymore (at least not without a converter) after the conversion to digital next year. But you may not have realized that the same measures that affect the way we watch television, also make a difference for other modes of communication.

Cell phone service providers have spent years trying to get customers to leave analog cell phones behind.

The good news for customers of Rocky Mountain Tracking is that they did not and will not experience an interruption in service because of the big switch to digital. RMT doesn’t sell analog devices, but you can be assured that if we did, we certainly would not have left our customers hanging. We look for and evaluate the latest tracking technology to keep our customers in the know. You don’t want to hear that your packages cannot be located and we wouldn’t let that happen.

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