A £50 set-top box in a Portsmouth suburb went haywire and sent out a signal identical to the one reserved for emergency distress beacons at sea.

A satellite detected the “mayday” call and passed it to the Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre (ARCC) at RAF Kinloss, Moray, which scrambled a Coastguard helicopter based at Lee-on-the-Solent.

The aircraft spent two hours searching the waters off Portsmouth harbour for stricken sailors before experts concluded the signal was coming from dry land.

A few hours later, a Portsmouth resident received a surprise visit from telecommunications officials who took the freeview box away for investigation.

This kind of emergency beacon automatically activates if it gets wet. Perhaps this poor bugger spilled a beer on his set-top box?



  1. Lou says:

    “The aircraft spent two hours searching the waters off Portsmouth harbour for stricken sailors before experts concluded the signal was coming from dry land.”

    I don’t know which experts put together the whole system (or analyzed the results), but two hours seems an awful long time to find where the signal is coming from.

  2. ECA says:

    WELLLL,
    sence the system isnt GPS, yet.
    Even if it IS.
    And GPs can only tell you where the BOX(probably on the ship, at the bottom) is and not the sailors which could float a good range in less then an hour with a 30KPH tide(which isnt fast)..

  3. Lou says:

    ECA… the box was on dry land, not on a boat. If the system properly showed that the box was not on/near the shore, searching the water would not have been done.

  4. Dan dD says:

    “Ships, yachts and aircraft carry emergency beacons which are activated when they come into contact with water, sending a signal on a reserved frequency that identifies the vessel and its approximate location.”

    It states it is an approximate location, and doesn’t mention anything about triangulation. I imagine they thought that since the signal was being traced they would get out their anyway and look by sight. In a helicopter they could have covered a lot of miles very quickly. No one expected it to be a freeview box, time was of the essence. I think they did the best thing possible given these signals are usually accompanied by a distress call.

  5. C0D3R says:

    The 121.5 MHz beacons have a positional accuracy of about a 35 mile in diameter circle (about 500 square miles.) These transmit an analog signal of 75 milliwatts detected by low-earth orbiting satellites. This really isn’t an ideal situation for triangulation or accurate, speedy response. Often two satellite passes, more than an hour and a half apart, are required to confirm ambiguities.



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