COASTGUARD NEWS - SCOTLAND & NI          

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Ssotland & NI 139/01
28 April 2001

NORTH SEA SEARCH FINDS NOTHING

Aberdeen Coastguard co-ordinated a search 30-40 miles east of Cruden Bay after an RAF satellite, a Nimrod aircraft and a helicopter, which was on the ground at RAF Lossiemouth, picked up a signal from an emergency beacon at around 10.15am on 27 April 2001.

The helicopter and the Nimrod, along with a lifeboats from Aberdeen and Peterhead, were sent out to investigate the signal.

A spokeswoman for Aberdeen Coastguard said such beacons had an error factor of around 11 miles, which made the search more difficult.

The search continued until around 2.30pm when coastguards were satisfied there was nothing to be found.

An Aberdeen Coastguard spokesman said: "This sort of thing happens quite frequently.

"One explanation is that helicopters pass this way to ferry in- and outbound oilrig workers, who have a built-in personal locator in their wetsuits.

"These can be inadvertently set off quite easily. Basically, we could have been trying to chase a moving helicopter but really, we will probably never know what it was that caused this incident."