Another thing that probable sucks is that more than likely, the plane is mostly painted white. Not easy to spot in the snow.

Looking at the last radar lat. lon. on google earth I realized I had flown across the Wind River mtns about 10 miles north of that location earlier this summer. I was flying a C-180, and usually set the power to cruise at 120kts. Approaching the mtns from the west at 13,500msl in very smooth air I noticed the gps was indicating 160kts ground speed. So, roughly a 40kt tail wind. I knew I would be in for a wild ride on the leeward side of the mtns, and I wasn't dissapointed. As soon as the terrain started to drop off into the valley below, my altimeter started to unwind at a rate of over 1,000 ft/min. I pitched up to best rate of climb of about 80kts and full power, and the best I could get out of the C-180 was 700 ft/min loss of altitude. This continued for a couple of minutes while I lost a cople of thousand feet then suddenly, I started going up very fast. The altimeter reversed direction and the rate of climb went to positive 1400 ft/min. I cut power to idle, and pitched nose down but tried to keep airspeed below maneuvering speed. I was carried up to near 16,000 ft, and then started back down again. I pitched up and added full power again to minimuze as best I could the rapid decent. About this time I hit some moderate turbulance that shook the plane rocking the wings side to side, and my door popped open blasting me with cold fridgid air. This continued for 3 or 4 more cycles with the severity gradually decreasing with each one as I got further down wind.

I will never again cross the Wind River Mountains when there is a stong west (or east) wind blowing. Terrain drops off rapidly on the eastern side with a lot of vertical fall, and often times sets up sever mountain wave activity.

I hope for good news on the missing plane.

The last time I was headed to Lander from the Pocatello area, I overnighted in Pinedale, and the next morning took off planning to fly right across the Wind River Range, as opposed to detouring somewhat around them. As I got close, and they loomed bigger and bigger, I talked myself into going around, with the excuse I'd probably use less fuel. Diverting to my right, I found a low pass, with a highway, that I squeaked over, as I remember when I went over the summit, it was 10K and it was the lowest part of the range. So yeah, very high, remote, and incredibly rough country and for whatever reason pretty intimitating at least for this pilot. Some big ranges just feel better to me then others, some I play around in, on , and while passing through them. The Wind River Range has always kinda spooked me, I am not too proud to say, I feel for the Mooney pilot and his passengers.

... did ask a few people that are in the loop if I could fly over the area and it was "suggested" they had it under control. My Zenith 801 in the next best thing to a heli but that point was lost on them. ...

I ran across this thread via a referral from another board. I am a CAP mission pilot and Air Ops Branch Director and thought I'd comment on stol's post where he obviously feels slighted.

Actually, he provided the main reason he was turned down:

The fact that the area the plane went down in is probably the most hostile terrain anywhere in the U.S. is making the search challenging at best and the potential for additional accidents to the search crews are high.

I am not involved in this particular search but I can tell you generally what would be happening:

1) The AOBD might be working with a dozen airplanes, 3/4 of which are airborne. He is communicating with them via FM radio frequencies that are not legal for others to use and not available in GA airplanes anyway. Where Mission Base isn't line of sight to the airplanes (probably true in this case) he will have a high-bird repeater in the air, in which case split receive and transmit frequencies are in use. He can't communicate with free lance volunteers.

2) He has in front of him a situation map, probably a "gridded" sectional. The grids are 15-minute lat/long squares with numbers. They are further divided into quadrants. His airplanes know what "284C1" means; the free lance doesn't.

3) Squares on the map that have been searched will have sticky notes with information on what was done. There will be different colored sticky notes on squares where there is an airplane searching. The search sequence will have been carefully planned to keep airplanes out of adjacent areas. They will have been assigned transit altitudes that are different than search altitudes and will descend to search altitude only when they are safely in their assigned area. None of this can be done with a free lance who can't be communicated with and who doesn't have the grid information.

4) He is working with Probability of Detection (POD) numbers that are quite small. Maybe 10% in this case. These PODs assume an airplane with a pilot flying plus two trained people looking for the target. The Incident Commander and the AOBD will be planning multiple passes of each area to get a cumulative POD that is decent. A free lance, alone in an airplane or with untrained people, will have an completely unknown POD -- but certainly much lower than the mission airplanes. (More: hhttp://www.capmembers.com/media/cms/F1 ... 852937.pdf)

So, it just isn't feasible to accept volunteers, no matter how skilled the pilots and no matter how suitable the airplanes. In fact, if things get too sticky the AOBD or IC will contact the FAA and arrange to have a TFR put up. This also has the advantage of keeping news helicopters out.

All that said, it is not unheard of for a downed airplane to be spotted by someone just flying by. Luck is a huge factors in these searches, especially in rough terrain.

If you want to help, CAP would like to have you. Contact your local CAP folks. Get the training, fly the exercises, and become part of the team. To learn more, do a few internet searches. Here's one place: http://www.cap-es.net/ with a bunch of information.

Re the ELT, if the 121.5 signal is very weak the SARSAT probably wouldn't be getting a 406 mhz. signal anyway. But IIRC the stats on ELTs are that they operate less than 2/3 of the time, so would not be astonishing if there is/was no ELT signal from this airplane.

The reasons posted by the CAP member are why, though I have been sorely tempted to offer my "services" in an emergency to the local authorities, I have as yet not.

I keep my crane in town, right across, like 50', away from the head sheriff's office, also very near the parking lot where the on duty deputies park their personal cars while on duty. My dog, before we go out on a crane job, uses the same rock the K9 patrol dog uses. As a result I have a passing aquaintance with them, though they just know me as the guy who parks his crane across the street, it has occured to me to let them know of my real job, flying my S-7 in the local areas mountains and plains. If there was ever an urgent pressing need for some eyeballs in the sky I could be in the air much sooner then the admittingly much more efficient but, initially anyway, cumbersome CAP. This assumes of course the weather is decent and they catch me at home, if so, bang I'm in the air 5 minutes later. And yeah, being able to slow fly in the 40's is pretty helicopter like.

I agree free lancer's could be a problem, more hindrance then help, in an ESTABLISHED CAP operation, but there could conceivably be a window of opportunity where a local pilot flying out of his own strip (with the resultant much faster response time) could be of help long before the CAP was on it, it being whatever the emergency was. Time being such an important factor in a medical emergency as it is. It would be interesting to check back as to how long it does take the CAP to get geared up...an hour, 2 or 3, more??

So...does it have to be all or nothing, JUST call the CAP, NEVER call anyone else? How about this Tinker, get ahold of your fellow CAP members in my area (Pocatello), run it by them, tell them you have a guy that could possibly be of some help while they are still staging their response (and I'm not being critical here of the slower response of the CAP, it stands to reason it will be a more time consuming process to round up the troops, as it were, flying out of a controlled (KPIH) airport, getting many different planes out of different crowded hangars etc) then ONE guy who flies out of his own strip. As to why I don't formally join up with my local CAP, here are a few reasons, correct me if I'm wrong: not a certified plane, self insured, and a general abhorrence of joining large groups of others, hell I don't even belong to the EAA, I just think I wouldn't last long as a CAP member.

Heck, no more talking about it, I'm just going to do it. The next time I get the crane out, while its warming up, I'll make the short walk over to the sheriff's office and make a pitch for an INFORMAL, in a pinch (as in EMERGENCY, which is what the hell we are talking about here) eyes in the sky offer by me. I'll let ya'll know how he responds. MY best guess? "Due to insurance and potential county liability reasons, thanks but no thanks."

No arguments with much of anything you say, courierguy. It does take CAP a long time to get completely cranked up, and it is certainly possible for anyone to get lucky on a search. Without training, without detailed information on the missing aircraft's flight path and flight plan, and working alone while trying to fly and look on the ground your POD is pretty low, but it ain't zero.

Re joining CAP, it can be a bureaucratic PITA but re the airplanes you would almost certainly be flying theirs, not yours, so insurance, etc. are not issues.

Re the sheriff, he may not initially know about a missing airplane search. The state CAP duty officer may well get a call directly from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. http://www.1af.acc.af.mil/library/facts ... sp?id=7497

Re Pocatello, here is the link: http://pocatello.idwg.cap.gov/ Give one of those guys a call to discuss your ideas.

Tinker....
Was a member of the CAP a few years back.

It was a dog and pony show like you cannot believe.

First it was this episode.


http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 017&akey=1

Then this one


http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 140&akey=1

I have been flying 30 years and there is NO way a "qualified" CAP pilot is going to kill me. Unless there is a TFR posted over a potential crash scene and the weather is within my personal limits I am going to go and look for other fellow human beings.

Thanks for posting the search criteria for the others, I know all about them from my time in the CAP. There is a good chance I might find them before the CAP will even issue a launch release

Ben

I wonder how many pilots when searching in a fixed wing for someone else have the discipline to maintain 1000 and 100 in the mountains?

If'n I was stuck on a sandbar waiting for someone to come rescue me, I'd be happy to see whomever it was that flew overhead and wagged their wings...

That said, after having a literal front row seat to the Steve Fossett debacle here at KHTH and the Flying M Ranch, I want nothing to do with the whole bunch. It looked like a porn flick around here with all the hard-ons waving around in the air. LTC This, Major That, Generals and "Adventure Searchers," all of them puffed up and pissing on each other. You guys ever watch the movie, "The Russians are coming, The Russians are coming." Nailed it exactly. Watch starting at about 1:45.


I fully understand the need for order and discipline in a search, but what I saw was a huge exercise in ego fullfillment and motivations not related to anything but their own gratification and self importance.

Rant over....

Gump

Gump, you mean a dog and pony show?

Glidergeek wrote:Gump, you mean a dog and pony show?

More like a Tijuana donkey show....

Gump

On the other hand. I'm glad someone's out looking for us when things go wrong.

Gump

58Skylane wrote:Another thing that probable sucks is that more than likely, the plane is mostly painted white. Not easy to spot in the snow.

Well, here's a picture of the Mooney. And it is mostly all white. Probably next to impossible to see if it landed in snow covered terrain


The tracking line didn't come out on this picture below. But the tracking line ends just past the white area of the mountains between 13,804 and 13,745 foot peaks. The tracking graph and log show's the plane in question only reaching 14,000 to 14, 600 feet. To me, that doesn't seem like a lot of extra room to play with in that type of weather condition. Looks like the plane should have flown further south around the hostile terrain. I don't know Maybe there was worse weather to the south?? I don't know.......sad deal, that's for sure.
Here's a link for the following picture I tried to put on here: http://flightaware.com/live/flight_track_bigmap.rvt?ident=N201HF-1288025201-187-0&airports=KJAC+KPIR&height=340&width=400&departuretime=1288033500&arrivaltime=

Gump:

That's the most apt description I've ever heard (sad to say). I'd never believe it if I hadn't seen it too many times.
+1.

As for the crash, a very sad deal -- sorry for the family & friends. You simply have to respect the country you're flying over and in.

58Skylane wrote:

z3skybolt wrote:58Skylane....

...we all need to learn from this and remember. My thoughts have been with you ever since you started the thread about commuting across mountains, where terrain and icing will be a factor.

Bob

I don't mean to get side tracked here on this thread. But, If this deal goes through someday and I would be lucky enough to get a commuter plane, I may not even get my IFR. Time will tell. But I don't really like the idea of flying IFR in a single engine plane. Especially the route I would be using 99% of the time. However, IFR would be great for those Inversion days in the Boise area and the Marine Layer days in the OC/LA basin (Not too worried about Victorville, CA). I just would NOT like to do any hard IFR at all, let alone for up to 3-4 hours. The heck with that. Another note that I had mentioned in the other thread is that my schedule would more than likely be very flexible. I would have a place to stay in SoCal and Idaho and If I'm in Idaho and the weather is bad, I would either drive (800 miles) or hop on an airline to Ontario or LAX if I really had to be there for work.

Thoughts go out to the families and friends involved. And yes, a big round of applause to the search and rescue crew!!

58 - Your comments re not flying IFR cross-country in bad Wx in the mountains are not off-topic. I fly x-country, part of the route over and near the mountains of New Mexico, nearly every week VFR. If I can't fly with high confidence in the Wx and my airplane, I don't fly, period. At times (summer, mainly) the Wx in the southern Rockies is some of the most challenging in the country - the National Wx Service declares the southern Rockies to be the area with the second most-frequent occurence of T-storms in the US - second only to Florida and the Gulf Coast.

I have several friends who are ex-Air Force pilots, one of whom left the USAF to head up the multi-turbine aircraft flight dept. of a Fortune 50 firm, and the other two retired from the USAF as four star and three star generals, respectively .. one of those was a fighter pilot who was shot down over North Viet Nam, the other eventually became SAC commander. All three of these friends, despite their aviation accomplishments, have strongly advised me to stay away from IFR in GA single engine light aircraft ... as one of them put it, the only IFR a single engine light aircraft pilot should be flying is "I Fly Roads". Their point: there's just too much opportunity for a bad ending for aircraft that really were never designed to be all-weather heavy duty x-country modes of transportation. I respect their opinion.

Terrible tragedy for this family. Unfortunately, we see this all the time in the Rockies, where people who don't know the mountains fly in and out of here from points east, mostly, and crash their planes and kill themselves and their family members and friends on a regular basis. Mountain flying is a whole 'nother world from flying the flatlands.

NMflyguy, Interesting comment from your Air Force friends! My buddy John from NY was in the Air National Guard (Air Force) at Stewart Int. in Newburgh, NY and has flown corporate all his career. He know heads up a small flight department at Teterboro (Global Express's). He and his friends say the same thing about flying small single engine aircraft IFR (especially hard [snow-ice] IFR) in bad Wx. "Don't do it!!" And the reason's they gave me will always be in the back of my mind.

But, I can see flying IFR being beneficial in any kind of plane in good to decent weather. Like mentioned, getting in and out of fogged in area's (with NO known icing!) and flying in and out of very complex/congested area's like SoCal and NYC (but, "VFR Flight Following" can work fine for those area's........as long as ATC has time for you).

Still no sign;

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/31/wy ... ing.plane/

Keep their family in your prayers. With the new snow, I seriously doubt this plane will be found before summer. If even....

Plane was found..... No survivors.

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional ... 03286.html

hicountry wrote:Words are hard to come by........

..as I said before..a prayer for the family.

I guess they found it. No survivors. 11/02/10