She was really getting to be annoying. We were nearing the end of our fifth 20-mile transect, with only one more to go before we would land and call it a day. And the dispatcher calls on the radio yet again.

"GF151 asks if you're using a splitter?"

"Yes, we are."

"Well, he suggests you try swapping out slots on the splitter to see if that works."

"We already tried that," the pilot answers. "Didn't do anything."

"Not much point in worrying about it now," he adds. "We'll be done in 10-15 minutes."

He sounds a lot less annoyed than I am. She's been like a telemarketer who just won't go away, ever since we took off less than an hour ago.

The point of discussion has been the little transponder sitting up on the cowling. It is supposed to report our location via satellite and the internet every two minutes or so, with the dispatchers (and anyone else with the password) watching our little spot move across the map as we fly.

Worked perfectly last week when we were tracking bighorn sheep.

Didn't work so well for GF153 last week, though, who crashed while flying the same sort of surveys we are doing. He and his pilot had crawled out of their wrecked and disintegrated airplane and called his wife on his cellphone, and then 9-1-1, before dispatch noticed anything was amiss with the transponder.

So, when technology failed us and the transponder refused to map our position, the pilot and I were perfectly happy to fall back on the old technique... checking in by radio every 20 minutes, giving our coordinates and direction. No way we were going to waste such a perfect morning for flying.

Perfect except for dispatch calling every few minutes with yet another suggestion for fixing our transponder problem.

Now, we're flying low.

I mean, low. Low enough to tell a doe pronghorn from a yearling buck.

At one point, I noticed we were flying even with a particular rock formation. I checked later on the topo map... at that point, we were cruising along 80 feet above the ground below us.

Eighty feet.

There is little or no margin for error, and the last thing you want is for the pilot to be distracted with radios, electrical cords and power plugs when he should be making sure the airplane stays, well, in the air.

So we finished the last 15-20 minutes (the pilot exaggerated) of our flight in peace and quiet. No problems, no worries.

Wasn't until the next day that another biologist called to discuss our transponder problems. He'd been listening in on our radio traffic and apparently the pilot's exasperation with the interruptions showed through. This bio just wanted to let us know...

The dispatcher pestering us about our malfunctioning telemetry equipment?

Was the same one on duty when GF153 went down.

"She's a little touchy about it," he explained.