(From the Radio Team Association at the Service of the Civilian Security (ADRASEC) in Senegal)
On Saturday 27 January 2018, a Civilian Security exercise was held in the region of Thies, Senegal, simulating the disappearance of a small airplane from the Senegal airspace, and initiating the appropriate search and rescue procedures to find the wreck and assist the persons in distress.
The main goal of this event was to allow the civilian authorities and the military forces to highly cooperate in a three-hour test of their emergency plan for an airplane crash that had a transmitting Cospas-Sarsat 406-MHz beacon.
The “crash” was supposed to have occurred in a rectangular area delimited by the towns of Popomguine, Sindia, Nguekhokh, and Ngaparou in Senegal; however, to make the exercise as realistic as possible, the real coordinates of the crash site and the associated 406-MHz beacon remained unknown to the SAR authorities.
The scenario was as follows:
8:30: Take-off of the Cessna 6VAIR from Tambacounda, destination Dakar, Senegal.
9:30: Approaching Dakar, the pilot radioed to air traffic control about his intention to perform an emergency landing on the airfield due to engine troubles; however, no further information was received.
9:45: Some minutes after the “crash”, the Cospas-Sarsat Spanish Mission Control Centre (SPMCC) in Maspalomas sent RCC Dakar an alert message with a location of the 406-MHz beacon and the information that the device was equipped with an auxiliary 121.5-MHz transmitter.
9:55: The Ground Forces were tasked with a Search and Rescue mission, including the location of the distress beacon.
10:13: A weak signal was heard on 121.5 MHz by the Radio team #1, confirming a first direction for finding the beacon.
11:32: Thanks to using several homing devices to triangulate the position from a number of directions, the beacon was finally located and the people on board “saved”.
Complementary information (FR) is available at: https://youtu.be/owJNGs_E7_4