I just found the most amazing device that should be standard equipment for most pilots... it might have even saved Steve Fossett. I spent about 25 years of my life deeply engaged in mountain rescue work in the U.S. and Europe. My "specialty" was technical rock rescue, like Yosemite or Joshua Tree. But every so often I was called upon to participate in search operations. Only once, in 25 years, did I personally ever find anyone. Usually it was someone else looking in an area that I had just walked by. Looking for someone in a wilderness area makes looking for a needle in a haystack easy. You might have followed the giant search for Steve Fossett and gotten an idea of how tough it is. Most aviation services use flight following to keep track of their aircraft so if the aircraft goes missing it greatly narrows the search area. Recent upgrades in ELT's have allowed the newer units to broadcast a GPS location to the SARSAT satellites, rather than requiring ground or air based assets to search with direction finding equipment. Now there is a handy, relatively inexpensive gizmo that allows any of us to have flight following. It's called a Spot. (www.findmespot.com) It will pick up its location from GPS satellites, and then broadcast that location to a series of commercial satellites and then download that information to a website, allowing someone to follow the track. Or it can make an emergency 911 call. Or even reassure your family that you are okay. The basic unit is $170 plus $100 yearly subscription cost. For another $50 yearly you can get the tracking service. Push a button and it will automatically update your position every 10 minutes. Flight Following for pennies per hour!! If Steve Fossett had used such a device, even it it were destroyed in a crash, searchers would have known his location within 10 minutes flight time of the last reported location.