Although more expensive, these units give you a myriad of advantages , not the least of which is fewer false alarms. Maintain your ELT regularly. At a recent aviation event in Alaska, free ELT testing was offered. Of the ELT s tested, less than half worked properly. Most of these were attributed to dead batteries.
Low batteries can cause erroneous signals and generate false alarms.
Conversely, false alarms can cause low batteries. So, make sure you've got strong batteries in your ELT . Your life may depend on it. This does nothing to reduce false alarm rates, but does have a dramatic effect on the impact of a false alarm. It will also help speed rescue in an actual distress.