Wow. Phil you always have interesting stories hi hi. 

Barb K1EIR

-----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