[Capt. Tom]

.I wonder who designed the system in the black boxes? ... seems poorly thought out..

My thoughts also.

Constant acoustic pingers are put on white sharks and they ping for well over a year.
I tried to call a friend of mine this morning who is involved in that tagging to get an idea of how long the pingers last. He would know.

But I know from experience they ping well over a year because he puts the hydrophones out in the spring and gets pings in the summer onward until he pulls the hydrophones out in he winter to avoid them being lost to winter storms. -Tom

[cherokee1]

I’ve been having my own problem with that whole “30 day battery life.” explanation. Sounds like a “lowest bidder” piece of krap. We have a wolf here in the Northwest that’s been wearing a transmitter collar for at least two years and his unit is just starting to weaken. Maybe we could just put a collared wolf on each airplane to kep track of them?