in Episode 4 the imperials put the tracking beacon on the Falcon to lead them to the hidden base, now I assumed that Han had found it and gotten rid of it which would be the smart thing to do. but I think in The Force Awakens novel there is a mention about tracking the Falcon using an old imperial beacon or something and it made me wonder if Han ever got that thing off his ship. Anyone else read this in the TFA novel?
Not so Bob; the old Imperial tracking device was indeed referenced in the TFA novelisation when Unkar Plutt turned up at Kanata's bar. That was a deleted scene of course, so it may or may not be an issue in future films. On the face of it, if Plutt can track the Falcon, then so can the First Order, so it's a possibility that they show up en masse at the Skywalker family reunion. Highly unlikely, of course, and the line from the novelisation may be conveniently forgotten. They didn't use it to track the location of the Resistance base in the film - they track the recon ship the Resistance sent out.
If it wasn't removed, why did the Empire bother dispatching all the probe droids to look for the Rebel base in ESB?? Why would they not know that the Falcon was hiding underneath a star destroyer? Obviously they did.
According to the ANH radio drama (considered by George Lucas to be a canon source) the homing beacon aboard the Falcon was eventually found and removed on Yavin IV. Obviously this must have been the case, otherwise Vader could have just used the beacon to locate the Falcon at any given moment during ESB. Should there be anybody claiming that that's still the same beacon in TFA, then it should become obvious that those propagating this idea haven't paid the minimal amount of attention to ESB.
Like the author of the novelisation - ultimately therefore the scriptwriter of TFA: "How - did you find me?" He smiled. It did not improve his appearance. "The ship you stole. The Millennium Falcon. You can't really track a ship while it's in hyperspace - but when it emerges, and particularly after it sets down somewhere, there are ways. Expensive, but in the case of valuable property, often worth it. Definitely worth it in the case of the Falcon. It happens to be fitted with a covert Imperial homing device. Old technology, but still quite functional. To which my presence can attest." I suppose this can be reconciled with ESB and ANH. The device was removed on Yavin IV as per the ANH radio drama. In ESB, the Empire couldn't find the rebels, or the Falcon, and needed Fett to track them to Bespin. Imperial techs were on the Falcon there - Piett's men disabled the hyperdrive and installed another tracking device. R2D2 switched on the hyperdrive, so perhaps he also disabled the tracking device. Plutt eventually finds it after the ship comes into his possession and reactivates it. There is no Empire anymore, so perhaps the First Order were not aware of it and are not looking for its signal, hence they needed spy information to track the Falcon to Maz's castle. Or it's a blunder by the storygroup / scriptwriter / novel author, and due to the cutting of the scene from TFA it does not need to be addressed.
Storm_Cloud IMHO it can only be reconciled with ESB if we seriously assume that after the Falcon's Bespin escape the Empire and Vader lost interest in locating the ship. I'm very confident that Alan Dean Foster was aware of that, we are probably looking at homing beacon that was somehow attached to the Falcon after ROJ and might have played a vital role in an unseen story how Solo actually lost his ship.
Even if the Beacon was never discover the Millennium Falcon can cloak its communication systems by hiding in a Asteroid Field. Darth Vader had to turn his Destroyer around to communicate with the Emperor. Also by going to Bespin in a remote star system communication frequencies must not be very good. Gaining a position on the coordinates of a ship would be made very difficult. Refined scanning would require very precise equipment to narrow in a any one ship.
Bob the X-Winger - We do not know whether hiding inside an asteroid would have obscured a homing beacon. On the contrary, if you are able (as TFA suggests) to track it over a distance of several lightyears, a few asteroids probably wouldn't matter especially when the pursuer is in the vicinity. Think about it: Leia tells Han that Vader and/or Tarkin probably put a homing beacon aboard the Falcon. Hours later the Death Star shows up in the Yavin System, proving Leia right. Does anybody seriously believe that Han Solo would not have done anything about it? The homing beacon must have been an active emitter, finding it was probably rather easy.
I said we do not know but based on the ESB the Millennium Falcon was not only in an Asteroid Field but the belly of a large creature. It was taking an entire Star Fleet to search for once small ship. If the beacon was still on it they would have been able to locate them. Also the Empire sent out lots of probes to search for the Rebels clearly the rebels have been working on communication silence and obscuring their presence. We see on Hoth those satellite looking dishes, what could be jamming signals keeping the Rebels well out of the Empires range. The beacon if it was on the Millennium Falcon would not be detected by the Empire.
I think Leia would've removed the thing the day after the celebrations we see at the end of ANH. She knew/suspected they had some tracking device on the ship, so to prevent the Empire from simply tracking them to Yavin all over again a week later, she either forced Han to remove it or had tech guys remove it (while forcing Han to let them do it.)
It does sound like that the tracking device is the one from when the Falcon was on the Death Star, could have easily been deactivated afterwards but found a way to remotely activate it another time and Han did that when the Falcon was stolen and it was only when it eventually was in flight it was detected
Or if R2D2 switched it off when he switched on the hypedrive. Bespin's central computer told him the hyperdrive was down, so why not tell him they've put another tracking device on it, which remained inoperative until Plutt got his hands on the ship, by which time no one is looking for the Falcon, except Han. It wasn't mentioned, but R2D2 could only really tell C3P0 and he has finished maybe two of the sentences he ever started with Han - he was always interrupted or switched off. There's a theory that leaves it there, undetected for perhaps many years.
I guess that they found it between episode 4 and 5. Didn't they put some technology on the Millennium Falcon after they had saved Leia? Since it took a while for the empire to find them on Hoth it must have meant that the technology to finding them wasn't there. My conclusion is that they must have found it between episode 4 and 5.
