The Cessna 120-140 Association Forum

Hi Everyone, Hope you had a good holiday. Thought I'd let you know about an experience I had last week. I wear an Apple Watch and one of the features is a fall alert (a g-meter I assume). I was flying last week and my watch sent a message to my emergency contacts saying I had a "hard fall" and it provided my location on a map. I don't recall hitting my watch against anything, no significant bumps, and (for those that know me) it was a pretty good landing. My girlfriend received the alert, knew I was flying, and assumed I had crashed. She freaked out and called my airplane partner, who in-turn, called the tower to see if they were talking to me. They weren't - Search & Rescue was dispatched. All this time I was fat, dumb, and happy enjoying a flight to nowhere. It took quite a while after I landed to get everyone back to a normal heart rate.

The Hard Fall feature is a good thing and might act as a back-up to an ELT but it can cause A LOT of unnecessary worry and stress. To avoid a repeat, I bought a Spot Messenger. The girlfriend now knows to see if I'm moving on the Spot map if she gets another SOS alert. If I'm still moving faster than a walk, I'm probably still flying.

I hope this story helps others from having a similar experience.

Happy New Year,
Dave

Hey Dave glad it was a false alarm and that you're ok. Thank for informing us. It's valuable information to know.

I'm now going to need to consider whether as long as I am flying I want the combination of both an Apple Watch and a girlfriend. My current watch features only the actual numbers 1 through 12 and doesn't communicate with my wife who is also my girlfriend. Life is good so far, knock on wood.

6863 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 5:44 pm Hey Dave glad it was a false alarm and that you're ok. Thank for informing us. It's valuable information to know.

I'm now going to need to consider whether as long as I am flying I want the combination of both an Apple Watch and a girlfriend. My current watch features only the actual numbers 1 through 12 and doesn't communicate with my wife who is also my girlfriend. Life is good so far, knock on wood.