If you live within half a mile of the harbour you could not have missed the activity in the air last Friday evening (30/03/07). Like most of Whitstable; I was unaware of the reason for a rescue helicopter to circle both land and sea for such a prolonged period of time till I was told by a friend the outcome.
As reported in both the Whitstable Times & Whitstable Gazette the reason for such a frenzied search was that an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) had been set off by thieves, scrambling a search for someone in distress.
The EPIRB had been stolen from the maintenance cabins in the harbour belonging to the wind farm operators and activated; and thrown away, causing the emergency services to be scrambled.
Unfortunately the combined efforts of the coastguard, two lifeboat crews and the RAF helicopter crew from Wattisham in Suffolk were no match for two Whitstable anoraks!
These Whitstable lads saved the emergency services a shed load of time & money by bringing the search to a halt by locating the transmitting device on the roof at the rear of the health centre and notifying the Coastguard, who then got all the glory in the press for its locating.
I understand that the local press will be doing a bit on these guys in next weeks Times.
Now EPIRB’s don’t just go off on their own (well some do, but they need to be submerged in water for that to happen) and in the hoax alert of Friday it took a w****r to cause all this unnecessary alarm and deployment of so many emergency services. One local paper estimates the cost as high as £20,000!
All credit to our emergency services, as the EPIRB was land based, they didn’t stand a chance of locating it. These services are already stretched without this type of incident happening.
If they catch the culprit, I wonder if it’s allowed for the Whitstable lifeboat crew to drag him to the forts behind the Town And Gown instead of doing community service?
I will try to get a photograph of both Paul & Andy to replace the anorak picture to the right.
This weekend for me and Paul proved to be an interesting one.
Paul, who was operating at Whitstable Harbour, witnessed a major search and rescue operation descend upon the town in northern Kent, Southern England.
For two hours the Whitstable Lifeboat and the Sheerness Lifeboat, local Coastguard units, two police cars and an RAF Sea King helicopter from RAF Wattisham (over 100 miles away) searched for what was assumed to be a stricken vessel off the Kent coast.
Paul had determined that an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) had been activated and detected by the worlwide satellite system which deals with such beacons.
Paul contacted myself, when it appeared that the location of the EPIRB couldn't be found, and offered our assistance. Obviously if the EPIRB was landbased then the radio direction finding capabilities at sea or air based could be put at a disadvantage.
Using Paul's existing mobile multiband installation - we did a quick sweep of the local area and coastline in order to determine and confirm the area that we needed to search.
Afterwards I used my own portable equipment to determine an approximate direction of the signal and sniff it out.
Within less than 20 minutes, I and Paul's efforts had located the EPIRB, which appears to have been stolen and thrown onto the roof of a building inland.
A member of the Coastguard shook both our hands before departing with the offending device and didn't appear to require our details for report writing.
We were both pleased to offer our assistance - in the knowledge that ANY device within the footprint of a detecting satellite (even one several thousand miles away) would be competing with any other EPIRB, which could of course be a genuine emergency.
We were pleased that our knowledge of radio detection gained via amateur radio, and our amateur radio equipment capabilities were able to be put to good use.
At the same time we were both dismayed that a criminal action had wasted the resources of many agencies and put other lives at risk.
