A friend of my son called from the Alvord Desert yesterday, telling of an aircraft stuck in the mud on the Alvord Desert. I guess it is very wet this summer. Kind of weird because it was mostly dry later in the spring. I hope none of you are the victim. I'll be heading that way in my plane tomorrow, so I'll try to get some pictures. Meanwhile, as always, it pays to know what you are landing on.
tom

Guess I better check Tim's SPOT, and bring a tow rope

Gump

Been to aAlvord a few times. It has been mostly dry but there has always been an area that was muddy. I always look for the dune buggy tracks. Flew over Black rock once and saw a big camper about 1/4 under the mud. Would have been a bad place to land.

Tim

Land near the edges . . . avoid the darker spots . . . drag the surface first . . . pay attention to the way the wheels feel and sound before you get slowed down?

Have a friend that put down on a "dry" lake bed to answer nature's call. Top surface cracked and dry. Wheels made that crunching sound. He was concerned, but *really* had to go bad. As the ship slowed, it sunk deeper and over onto the nose it went. Engine at idle and amazingly no prop damage. Took several days and lots of plywood and muck to get 'er pulled out.

NOT ME!!

Not me either

The Alvord is the closest I have ever come to going on the back of an airplane. Quite a few years ago a bunch of cubs, a C-180 plus my Mom and Dad and I in our Pacer camped within walking distance of the hot springs. At the time, our Pacer was equipped with 6.00's and the original Piper long "tear-drop" style wheel pants. When we left we followed the tracks of one of the cubs thinking that it would be good ground. Well we did not take into consideration that the cub had nice big tires compared to our little covered ones. Dad had just started to bring the tail up when the mains broke through the crust and we went into the mud. The Pacer went from full power takeoff run to stopped in about 40 feet. The 180 was to our right and saw the nose go down fast, he knew we went over. But, we didn't...I can swear that we looked at nothing but dirt through the windshield though.

Well after my mom yelled at dad for stopping so fast, and then calming down after we knew what happened. We got out of the airplane to see what we got into. The mains were buried up to about and inch past the bottom of the pants, and the tail wheel came down and buried it self up to the top of the SCOTT 3200 fork. The 180 driver stopped and came back to help, boy was he glad that we were still on 3 wheels. It took 6 guys to pick up the Pacer and drag it over to hard ground. We took the wheel pants off and they were completely packed with mud and the wheels could not turn. The nose of the wheel pants also had cracks running up both sides about half way up the pant. To this day I am positive that the only reason we did not go over on our back is because the nose of the wheel pants kept us from going over.

After we got home it did not take dad too long to convert over to a set of 8:50 's.....

Brian.

You know, I was wondering if the pilot was a member here or not. I was the one who recovered this Cessna 150 on Friday night. Took us about 4 1/2 hours to get it taken apart and loaded on the truck. Maybe it will help narrow things down, when I say this was a tailwheel conversion 150. A Blackrock Airport sticker in the back (I am assuming he came from Burning Man). The playa was relatively dry with a little bit of moisture. He tore the left gear off and broke the tailwheel spring so I think maybe he caught a crosswind and slammed it in a little hard maybe. Pilot was OK which is good to hear. I recover about 90 percent of the aircraft here in NorCal when they go down and sometimes its good to hear no one gets hurt. Everybody stay safe and put me out of work!