Last Thursday, July 9 an aircraft departing Santiago de Chile carrying out an air ambulance service to pick up a patient on Easter Island, lost communication more than 1.000 nautical miles from the continent with its control tower, so the pilot turned to the frequency of the Peruvian Relief Chain in the 7.100 KHz.

While the exercise of the Peruvian Socorro Chain had ended a few minutes before, colleagues Guillermo Guerra OA4DTU stayed on wheel, also because of the reason why the driver of the Chain was operating, and Giancarlo Passalacqua OA4DSN, so the driver of the aircraft was able to contact William.

In this way communication was established with the aircraft, who detailed its delicate situation, given an apparent failure in its satellite communication equipment, so requested support to communicate via telephone with Ocean Air Control, service of the Directorate General of Aeronautics of Chile that watches over that 32 million square kilometres airspace in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile.

This is how Oceanic Control takes the call of Guillermo, pointing out his surprise and relief for communication, since they were indeed in an alert situation due to the loss of contact with the aircraft and that the remote team HF of the Island Tower Easter was not operational at the time, so communication was not possible for them.

About 10 phone calls were made with this service, pointing out the different positions and schedules of its route, plus some indications for pilots and air control respectively.

Other OA colleagues were attentive and ready to take action if necessary, accompanying Guillermo in contact and the aircraft until he knew it would reach destination.

This is how it was approximately 23:30 (04:30 UTC), the aircraft reports that it managed to make contact via VHF with the Easter Island Control Tower, confirming the descent and landing instructions on the island!!!

The joy and satisfaction of all those who were on frequency was absolute even more since minutes after losing contact by HF the pilot communicated with Guillermo by sending him his greetings, thanks and a photograph of the aircraft perched on the runway Mataveri (photo ), where at the minute it was raining and waiting for a patient to be moved to Santiago, Chile.

Finally, the accompaniment to the aircraft lasted nearly 3 hours, which was permanent from the first contact until its arrival at destination, with the thanks also from the Ocean Air Control Service to Guillermo and the Peruvian Socorro Chain.

This action reaffirms the role played by amateur radio in situations of risk or emergency.

Peruvian Radio Club Source