Phil, that was very interesting.

-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2013 1:32 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Plane down with only 2 meters

A friend of mine by the name of Milt, was a flight instructor for small
engine planes.  I used to talk to him every day coming and going to the
airport.  I asked him how he was doing one morning as he was motoring into
work and he said, "Well, I'm still alive."  I wondered what that meant and
said as much.
He said, "Well, yesterday my buddy I am training crashed in the high
country in the middle of a thick forest."  I ask him the details and he
said they were doing runs up and over high mountain ridges by using hot air
currents to be lifted up and over a ridge the small single engine planes
often couldn't achieve without the warm air currents.  I have another
friend, not a ham, and that was apart of his mountain training, too.  The
pilot dropped the plane into a deep valley and took his hand off the yoke
and told my friend, ok, get us out of this valley.  For a half an hour they
motored around the valley and my friend kept saying, "I just can't do it; I
can't find a warm air current to lift over and out of this valley."  "Keep
trying," the uninterested trainer said.  "You'll find one eventually
because I am not helping you."  Sparky, my friend, flew and flew and flew.
Another good friend of mine was in the back for the ride and he was a
Vietnam vet.  He personally told me that he was scared spitless that Sparky
wasn't going to make it.  Finally, flying right to the end of the valley
before turning to rotate through another turn, they hit the hot pocket and
he said the little plain lifted up gently and over the ridge like a kite
flying high in the sky.  Milton told me this guy he was training came over
a ridge but didn't maintain flight speed when they lifted over and the
plane came down to tree top level.  Not being able to pull out, and Milt
not being able to take over quick enough, the plane plowed right into the
tree tops.  The engine failed and nosed over and the plane flipped on to
it's back.  The bows of the great pine forest  lowered the little plane
slowly to the ground, upside down, without any damage to the plane.  Milt
said they were about ten feet off the ground so they opened their doors,
hung down as far as they could, and dropped to the ground.  Milton found
the nearest mountain peek, hiked un to it and used their only working
radio, his 2 meter HT, to key up a repeater and call for help.  It was
nearly dark by the time they were rescued.  I asked Milt why he was going
into work.  He said, "I'm afraid I'll never climb into a plane again if I
don't go right back to it.  My point is that the mountainous areas are very
spotty in repeater coverage once you get up the hills where deep valleys
and deep wide canyons are.
Sometimes you have to even climb to higher ground with a cell phone during
good times let alone with 20 plus inches of rain fall, flash flooding, and
or snow fall.  They claim that amount of rain would have equaled 150 to 200
inches of snow fall last week up in those mountain towns and for that
elevation and a little more drop in temperature, and it would have been
snow instead of flood waters.

Phil.
K0NX