Pardon me if you guys have already seen this.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 154&akey=1


but I still contend he either iced it up while scud running through the cloud layer trying to get to the scene of the previous crash, dropped down low to try to melt off the ice and either lost control or was so heavy he could not maintain level flight. The weather reports indicate it was ripe for building ice. That or he tragically miscalculated while buzzing up the valley and smacked the trees...

Godspeed Sparky.

Ben
Jackson Hole Wy.

there is more to the story than in the report, I shared a hangar with Sparky and spent time with him and his new plane, I went to the crash site, everyone in the search knew that it was different this time. the FAA was looking for him the day before. he came to a fork in life and made a choice. he left us a good set of tools to use,

Pittman11

If you shared a hangar with Sparky, I would think you guys were atleast somewhat friends. Your post reads to me like you are implying that he committed suicide.

As you must know, he was liked, loved, and respected by many. He's dead now. Why would you bring up something like that into an open, public forum.

Seems to me to be in poor taste.

If I am misunderstanding your post, I will appologize, and stand corrected.

Gary

At least one of the reasons they were looking for him was because of what he did a few days before. He was IFR from Helena to Billings and got up as high as FL220, much higher than his requested altitude and completely missed Billings. He was out of radio contact very similar to the Northwest crew last month. He got into Wyoming before he finally got it turned around, a good 120 miles from his destination. No doubt he had hypoxia.

that's not what I'm saying, the only one that knows is Sparky, my problem is every one is just thinking of his death, I went to a mountain seminar in ID and they have to start talking about him and even though they know nothing, everywhere it is the same Aopa in the news LOC FBO, He was not drunk, over CG, in ice, looking for elk, or even in the mountains at all, he was in gliding distance of an airport that he knows well, it is on my main path when flying and always drop my wing for him, the point is he was no young pilot he lived a full life and died doing what he loved, and every one has forgotten what he has done, shake you finger at me all you want but at lest I'm not just another ahole saying sh## that i don't know nothing about and putting him down

sorry not pointing anyone out just trying to move on

pitman11 wrote:that's not what I'm saying, the only one that knows is Sparky, my problem is every one is just thinking of his death, I went to a mountain seminar in ID and they have to start talking about him and even though they know nothing, everywhere it is the same Aopa in the news LOC FBO, He was not drunk, over CG, in ice, looking for elk, or even in the mountains at all, he was in gliding distance of an airport that he knows well, it is on my main path when flying and always drop my wing for him, the point is he was no young pilot he lived a full life and died doing what he loved, and every one has forgotten what he has done, shake you finger at me all you want but at lest I'm not just another ahole saying sh## that i don't know nothing about and putting him down

Pitman,

I'm not sure that you're being chastized but the points you make in your jumbled post above were'nt made clear in your first post. I read it the same as Shortfielder. What exactly is he implying?? You seem to have the angle on what he wasn't doing then imply that only Sparky knows what he was doing.

No worries though, as you say, its better to remember him for all the great things he did and leave the speculating to the speculating experts-

Peace

Re: Sparky's crash
by Bonanza Man » Fri Nov 13, 2009 3:52 pm

At least one of the reasons they were looking for him was because of what he did a few days before. He was IFR from Helena to Billings and got up as high as FL220, much higher than his requested altitude and completely missed Billings. He was out of radio contact very similar to the Northwest crew last month. He got into Wyoming before he finally got it turned around, a good 120 miles from his destination. No doubt he had hypoxia.Bonanza Man
Posts: 414
Joined: Fri Jul 07, 2006 3:42 pm
Location: Billings, MT

Where did you get this information BM? They were looking for him because he was overdue. It had nothing to do with his previous flights. Also, Your hypoxia theory is reckless speculation.

Remember the man for all the good he did over the years for aviation ~ all the knowledge he left behind; the generous nature he had; the sense of humor ... the bad puns.

Remember YOU are human too if you must speculate; that none of us are perfect ...

Assumptions are never good things ... what exactly happened that day will now obviously never be known to anyone ~ but Sparky. Afford him the same respect now that he is gone, that you yourself - or your family and friends would want - if something happened to you.

If you must speculate and/or reflect on why and how he died that day - and it's human nature to do so - do it in the interest & spirit of learning something as a pilot about the risks/responsibilities you take on every time you sit left seat as PIC.

He'd want that.........

Rest in peace Sparky.

Dave wrote:

Re: Sparky's crash
by Bonanza Man » Fri Nov 13, 2009 3:52 pm

At least one of the reasons they were looking for him was because of what he did a few days before. He was IFR from Helena to Billings and got up as high as FL220, much higher than his requested altitude and completely missed Billings. He was out of radio contact very similar to the Northwest crew last month. He got into Wyoming before he finally got it turned around, a good 120 miles from his destination. No doubt he had hypoxia.Bonanza Man
Posts: 414
Joined: Fri Jul 07, 2006 3:42 pm
Location: Billings, MT

Where did you get this information BM? They were looking for him because he was overdue. It had nothing to do with his previous flights. Also, Your hypoxia theory is reckless speculation.

The fact he was hypoxic is not in dispute. The tape of the incident will one day be a training tape. An interesting fact is that 10 days before at the Montana Aviation Conference there was a program given by a SLC Center controller and one of the issues he touched on was hypoxia. He played an audio tape and video of the radar data that shows what happens, and what it sounds like on the radio, when you get hypoxia. A carbon copy of what Sparky sounded and acted like. Flight Standards was investigating like they do on any pilot deviation brought to their attention, this was a pretty spectacular one. As the OP stated the FAA was looking for him the day before his last flight, he wasn't overdue from anything yet. It was regarding the previous IFR flight.

Read the NTSB report BM.

Family members of the pilot contacted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on the evening of March 17, 2009, after becoming concerned when the pilot had not arrived at his intended destination.

Stol wrote:Pardon me if you guys have already seen this.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 154&akey=1


but I still contend he either iced it up while scud running through the cloud layer trying to get to the scene of the previous crash, dropped down low to try to melt off the ice and either lost control or was so heavy he could not maintain level flight. The weather reports indicate it was ripe for building ice. That or he tragically miscalculated while buzzing up the valley and smacked the trees...

Godspeed Sparky.

Ben
Jackson Hole Wy.

I've known Mr. "Sparky" Imeson for some 15 years since he was flying in Southern Calif. for Northrup out of Hawthorne.We flew together some 70-+ hours over the years.Talked to him by phone and email almost daily in the last year before his passing. I was scheduled to go to Helena to work on his latest Cessna 180. He was planning on moving out of the community hanger ---but that was all that was available when he bought the C-180 from Joe Stancil last December. If you go back to early March many post I made on this you'll see we were right in the middle. I was deeply saddened by Sparky's crash.

Blue Skies and Tailwinds Sparky

TJ Carr wrote: I first met Sparky in 2007 when I bought the 180 he had set up for air taxi in Jackson Hole. The first time I spoke with him I found him to be quite the gentleman and very serious about everything he undertook. My impression of him never changed. He flew the plane out here to Connecticut for me after the purchase. He stayed here with my wife and I for three days while he signed me off as PIC for the Skywagon. He spoke well of his wife, Siew Hwa, his family and the many friends he had made. We talked for hours about his adventures including the June 2007 crash, the survival story and God's mercy. He was still wearing his back brace during the visit here in August of '07. During the checkout, I was making an entry into the pattern and called 'Skywagon, three out on the fourty five, 07 Westerly (RI)'. Sparky turned and looked at me and said "you know, there are other Skywagons". So, the next call included my tail number. Sparky was that way with everything, crossed t's and dotted i's. We continued to trade emails or phone calls on a regular basis right up until just a few days before the March crash. I had no reason to believe he was anything but looking forward to another adventure. I've thought about the crash many times over the past ten months. I would think that Gaelen and Gary, the friends he met at Bozeman that fateful afternoon, would have pulled him aside if they thought he wasn't up to the flight. I also wondered about distractions. Sparky and I had traded information about cameras for several weeks. He was really up on a new Canon 5D 21 MP full frame digital, the one with video mode. My best guess is that he was either distracted with the photography or there was some weather related condition that experience couldn't get him out of. Need it be said that we are all human, every one of us. As far as the high altitude flight on March 15th, I think we need to remember that Sparky didn't amass all that information about mountain flying by hanging around the FBO. He had many hours of flight which included close calls, near misses and, like the rest of us, an occasional poor choice. He also had taken calculated risks to experiment with man and machine. Perhaps therein lies the explanation.
Sparky left us much to learn as well as the final lesson, we are but mortal men. Blue Skies.

Mr. Carr Does your Cessna 180 have a circuit breaker/ switch panel in the over head ?

Stol wrote:Pardon me if you guys have already seen this.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 154&akey=1


but I still contend he either iced it up while scud running through the cloud layer trying to get to the scene of the previous crash, dropped down low to try to melt off the ice and either lost control or was so heavy he could not maintain level flight. The weather reports indicate it was ripe for building ice. That or he tragically miscalculated while buzzing up the valley and smacked the trees...

Godspeed Sparky.

Ben
Jackson Hole Wy.

In early March 2009 I was deep into this -one of my post on this follows -I had 2 dozen aircraft from Washington to Colrorado to Southern Calif to New Mexico and back ready to respond to the call .

Back Country / Mountain Pilots !

Immediate Attention Required

Search / Rescue Operation for One of Our Own


Well known mountain and back country pilot Sparky Imeson has been reported missing on a flight from Bozeman, Montana back to his home in Helena, Montana. He was flying his blue and white Cessna 180 N2698Y.

He left Bozeman at 2:20 PM for a one hour flight to Helena. His radar track was lost approximately 18 miles north of Bozeman on course. We do not know for sure whether this was a radar anomaly, an electrical malfunction or a downed aircraft. However they have tried to reach him by cell phone without success.

We need to field a search party immediately.

Sparky is an expert at back country flying and knows how to make the best of a survival situation… this means that finding the aircraft soon gives him a very good chance of survival. This is a TIME-CRITICAL situation.

As an added incentive, EDM Aircraft enterprises is offering a 50% discount on either our aircraft battery upgrade or aircraft rigging service, in return for your immediate participation in the search for Sparky and his aircraft. Show fuel receipts for 5-6 hours of flying from an airport in the immediate area searching for Sparky, and EDM will honor the discount.

It shouldn’t really be necessary, Sparky Imeson has dedicated much of his life to teaching others and sharing his flying knowledge so that YOU could fly safer and come home to your family. Please go the extra mile and help bring one of our own back to his family. I’m flying up from Las Vegas and will be joining the search Thursday morning… get there before me and help find Sparky! The local authorities are not treating this matter as importantly as we feel they should be.

One of back country aviation‘s best friends needs our help… for real. If you were down in the mountains you would want people to drop what they were doing and saddle up to help.

This is not a drill!


Bill Reid EDM Aircraft enterprises [email protected] 702-581-2022

--------------------
Bill Reid CPA>AOPA>PAMA>VHPA>N5502B
A&P /I.A. CPA Rigger,Pilot Boulder City,NV. 61B

182 STOL driver wrote:

Stol wrote:Pardon me if you guys have already seen this.

.

Back Country / Mountain Pilots !

Immediate Attention Required

Search / Rescue Operation for One of Our Own

One of back country aviation‘s best friends needs our help… for real. If you were down in the mountains you would want people to drop what they were doing and saddle up to help.

This is not a drill!
--------------------
Bill Reid CPA>AOPA>PAMA>VHPA>N5502B
A&P /I.A. CPA Rigger,Pilot Boulder City,NV. 61B

Back early on during the search for Steve Fossett, I was sitting in the Taildragger restaurant at KMEV (the hub of search activity except for the private search out of Flying M). It was pure bedlam, with at least a dozen big television satellite rigs, dozens of reporters, a bevy of CAP and several military aircraft mobilized. It was almost impossible to find a place to plant your butt in the taildragger, with several reporters banging away on their laptops.

Finishing my burger, I remarked to a friend sitting across from me, "If it was me they were looking for, there'd probably be just a couple of people, and they'd be out in the parking lot trying to decide if they ought to have lunch first before starting the search."

bumper

pitman11 wrote: and died doing what he loved,

So did Gerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain (dead rock stars) . I just hate that expression

Tim

qmdv wrote:

pitman11 wrote: and died doing what he loved,

So did Gerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain (dead rock stars) . I just hate that expression

Tim

Don't forget David Carradine.

tom

Died doin what he loved? To me that's a statement I don't want uttered at my memorial/funeral because that's not the way I want to go. Most likely if I go that way (while flyin) it'll be because I fu##ked up and I'm hoping I don't take somebody with me. I don't want to go screwing things up for other people like you guys. I don't want the FAA or other agencies whether related to aviation or not scrutinizing my last actions looking to see if they can put a stop to something that we all love and enjoy because of my reckless, selfish or stupid actions. I didn't know Sparky and my statement here is in no way a judgment of him, I've got no opinion or hypothesis of what happened which to him in his last moments. To all that loved, respected and valued him I'm sorry for your loss.

Hey glidergeek:we had a Stemme motor glider go down this summer outside of Copper Basin, flown by a 77 year old Bay Area pilot
who was in town, along with 4 of his buddies and their Stemmes, all of a similarly advanced age. The deceased pilot had flown this bird to Alaska, and to the tip of South America, so one could assume he had his act together. Talking to the Arco airport manager they all sounded like a real group of older badasses having one hell of a good time in the Idaho mountains, they could have been in nursing homes..... BUT I bet the last he was thinking was NOT "at least I'm doing what I like", or words to that effect. I missed meeting these guys by a day, I saw the birds, 5 in a row is a pretty awesome sight, but they were in town, the next day he went down.