Down in the dumps

New Zealand's Radio Spectrum Management (RSM) Hamilton Office has been called out to locate interfering signals affecting emergency frequencies.

A helicopter traced the signals, which were coming from a
distress beacon, to a landfill outside Paeroa.

It had certainly been hoped that either the batteries would
go flat or that the successive running over by a 50 tonne digger would destroy the beacon. As none of the scenarios developed RSM was called in to locate the beacon and render it non-operational.

Using the latest global positioning technology together with a negative gain antenna, an area of interest on the far side of the landfill was selected. After each grab by the digger, the area was checked to ensure the transmitter was still operational.

On the fourth grab, the beacon was unearthed.

Markings on the outside indicated that it could have been 20 years old. The on/off and test control had been lost in the landfill.

RSM removed the batteries to stop it transmitting.

RSM is regularly dealing with similar scenarios involving distress beacons and urge all users of emergency beacons to ensure that batteries have been properly removed prior to disposal.

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

• Earlier this week, we reported on a similar problem affecting a New Zealand distress frequency, see:
'Coat hanger' causes severe interference to distress channel

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