iPAT brought up a very good point that wire strikes can affect both airplanes and helicopters in the previous thread:

https://backcountrypilot.org/forum/fatal-traps-for-helicopter-pilots-by-greg-whyte-25183

Decidedly forked the thread topic to include all aircraft and... looking for wisdom that people could post about wires and how to avoid a strike on aircraft.

My “off the cuff” start to this thread:

(ELK #1)As a seaplane pilot, I have spent many hours surveying lakes (within mountains and canyons) in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska ascertaining hazards. My advice is go slow, descend very (very) slowly after each pass. Never be in a f#-k’n rush in the backcountry!

(ELK #2) All canyons can have wires. Towers may have wires. Although, flying above the superstructure, hilltop, canyon rim etc. somewhat mitigates potential wire strikes... A tethered balloon may have wires with unlimited altitude! Check TFRs, NOTAMs, Restricted Areas and charts for tethered balloons. If you see a ballon be careful.

(ELK #3) Never joy ride. Flying low takes extreme vigilance and caution.

Please comment on this very important backcountry topic!

Wires are most often picked up peripherally, so we need to constantly move our head from side to side. When high flying an area at a couple hundred feet, we should determine how every wire gets into the area and how every wire exits the area. We should be concerned with every change of direction of poles in the area, as there will be a guy wire stabilizing that pole. We should be concerned with every wire that ends in the area, as there will be a guy wire stabilizing the last pole. Long span high wires will droop in the middle and larger wires will droop more than smaller wires. The big wire is easy to see but it is the little ones higher up that will get us. All man made structures should be suspect of having wires. Wide rivers need be flown very high or very low, as wires will be high over a long span. Narrow rivers can most safely be flown higher than poles on the banks. When descending into an area, as with crop dusting, anticipate wires as poles may be hidden in trees. expect wire siteing startle to result in pitch up. If to late, counter that violently and pitch down. I have cut wires with the prop pitching down. Many have been stopped by wires they pitched up into. All were common structure supply wires, none were high voltage big wires. Those were actually little problem spraying, because we could go under them easily.

Ground clutter will hide almost any wire. Keeping them up in the visible horizon is safer than mixing with them at their level. Low or high. Danger is in the middle.

I haven't seen a long span skyline for awhile, but I wouldn't be durprised if the're still out in the woods in the West or someplace in Canada. The main lines can cross a canyon and be raised or lowered as needed to reach logs beneath of a ways to the sides of the line. I have never seen a NOTAM for cable logging, probably because by the time one is publised the cables might be moved.

There's a canyon in the west Cascades that's crisscrossed with the Navy's antenna wires. Dunno if they're used any more, but the wires fill the canyon from the ground to the ridges above. The wires are carted on the Seattle Sectional about half way between 1S2 (Darrington) and KAWO (Arlington).

Grew up flying out west. As a teenage pilot I did my fair share of stupid stuff but held to the maxim of staying above the rim. It can be risky even if you’re intimately familiar. Cable trams both old and new are a real wake-up. Still have nightmares about being hung up in the wires with no way out.

Landing on a log crib built by loggers on a sky line logging operation near North Bend WA about 1972. The landing pad was built for a Hughes 300 to shuttle chokers back to the tower. We were sent there to check a fire that had started and was attacked a couple days earlier. Initial attack was by a helitack crew in a Bell 205 and they nearly hit one of the guy wires off the tower. The tower had been removed by the time we landed there.





Cable logging operation on the Naches Ranger District in Central WA summer 2019. No tall sky line tower. You can see the cables about 20 feet above the guy with a white hat near center of photo. I would stay away.


Miners on the North fork of the John Day River near Dale Oregon used to nail a length of number 9 wire to trees on each side of the river about 10 feet off the water. They would suspend a portable sluice box from the wire. We did very thorough recon from above before landing on the river bars down there.

Flew behind this, was pretty cool, would call out caution terrain, obstacle or WIRES, then it would call out warning as you got closer (as I recall).

I was thinking to myself, man this little PFD would be sweet in my amphib

Fletcher Anderson, author of the first mountain flying book I ever read (and believed in) bought the farm in the Snake River canyon in 2005 after hitting wires. Pretty startling.

I think tree-top level or just below is a bad place to be. Be above tree tops or right on the water. In my first 5 hours of training in an ultralight, my instructor (late) let me flying the Illinois river on the water and directed me to fly under some wires. Wasn't sure what to think at the time (other than yee haw, this is awesome, being 22 and all, but looking back I'm still wondering.

I guess it depends on the canyon or river. I would imagine the death comes not from the clothesline effect but the fall to the ground right after.

I was once taking off from and landing on gravel bars on the lower stretch of the Grand Ronde river. I was dipping tires while enjoying perfectly still early morning September air. After a departure, I was accelerating in ground effect and decided to keep it very low for reasons that I’ll never know. I spotted a 20 foot tower on the side of the river. As soon as I was able to think “what the heck?”, a cable passed right over the plane. It was a cable for a river crossing trolly. It was not marked on the chart and there was very little development to support its existence. It was my luckiest day yet that I am aware of.

In 2003 a pilot and one passenger in a Weyerhaeuser Bell 206 Long Ranger were looking for water holes in the Siuslaw River east of Floence, OR to use as bucket dips while fighting forest fires. They hit a power line that crosses the river and both people on board were killed. I was working on a USFS fire at the time. We were told about the accident at morning briefing. Then our Incident commander noted that he was in a Bell 47 that hit that same power line in 1973. Everyone survived that one. I then remembered that accident as I was on the Naches helitack crew at the time and all the helitack crews in the Region (Washington and Oregon) were stood down for a day afterword.

News paper article https://theworldlink.com/news/local/rep ... 8c49f.html

That worked out well. When we actually want to fly under a wire, we look at the poles and not at the wire. Low in ground effect and we don't want to split the difference should a fence be under the wire. We just don't want to go under that one even if it looks like there is room. We want to be in lower ground effect than fence height. And rudder turns only. No banking.

tcj wrote:In 2003 a pilot and one passenger in a Weyerhaeuser Bell 206 Long Ranger were looking for water holes in the Siuslaw River east of Floence, OR to use as bucket dips while fighting forest fires. They hit a power line that crosses the river and both people on board were killed. I was working on a USFS fire at the time. We were told about the accident at morning briefing. Then our Incident commander noted that he was in a Bell 47 that hit that same power line in 1973. Everyone survived that one. I then remembered that accident as I was on the Naches helitack crew at the time all the helitack crews in the Region (Washington and Oregon) were stood down for a day afterword.

News paper article https://theworldlink.com/news/local/rep ... 8c49f.html

Thank you for posting the details. I fly Florence often (and ride the sand dunes). The Siuslaw River is definitely a hazardous area.

High line Slacklining is becoming an increasingly popular backcountry sport. There is currently a documentary called “Pushing the Line” that highlights a group in their pursuit to get the world record slack line length. It’s like 1500 or 2000 meters long! All I keep thinking while watching the show is how horrible it would be to all of a sudden see a person floating in the air before running into that line ending in tragedy for all!

Best wire strike story I have is from 40 plus years ago: a buddy (who I had gotten into flying) and I were invited by the drag strip promoters to overfly the track during a slack time. Ultralights were new then and quite the novelty. My low time buddy got a bit distracted and maybe was showing off a bit but he got a bit low....my first clue something was amiss was when I saw a puff of smoke come off the top of one of the 100'+ high steel lattice towers holding the high voltage wires that served a large factory complex, the biggest customer/consumer of the utility, Idaho Power, to give an idea of their size. I then looked over to where my buddy was flying and saw that he was at zero airspeed and dropping thru the load lines, arcing and sparking as he fell. Then the dacron sail ignited (think Hindenburg), and finally the wreckage impacted the ground, after falling at least 100' after hitting the much smaller and harder to see ground wire that was also stretched tighter along the tower tops.

My first thought was that at least he didn't suffer, and his wife was going to kill me. No way could anyone survive that crash. BUT, he "landed" 40' from an ambulance, the fire was put out, and he was pulled from the wreckage and once in the hospital found to have only suffered a slightly sprained arm, that was it! His wife didn't kill me. I took the UL apart the next day, half dollar size holes were burned into the aluminum spars, the rigging cables had burned thru the stainless tangs, but the 3 gallons of gas in the poly tanks (making me a big believer in their crash worthiness to this day, aluminum ones would have fractured or burst, pretty sure) were intact, and the open framed pilot enclosure was unzapped and unbent, thank you triangulation. John is still above ground to this day, lucky bastard!

I ran a Stearman through a standard two wire service I knew was there. Behind and under a lot of pressure, so I got really behind.

NineThreeKilo wrote:Flew behind this, was pretty cool, would call out caution terrain, obstacle or WIRES, then it would call out warning as you got closer (as I recall).

I was thinking to myself, man this little PFD would be sweet in my amphib

This looks like CHARTED wires. Does it locate and display UNCHARTED cables and guywires???

About a mile and a half up stream from the confluence of the Imnaha and Snake Rivers there are big power lines that come down the Salmon River, Cross the Snake and run up the Imnaha River. Those things freak me out. You can see the conductors between the poles if you know they are there and are looking. There are small wires stretched tight between the tops of the poles that you can not see. This is a text book "Stay above the tops of the poles" situation. Doug Bar is about three miles on up stream from those wires on the Oregon side of the Snake.

Final approach to Dug Bar. What are those things on the Runway, better go around.


Now I can see, it's a pack string. Don't scare 'em.


Sky crane Snorkeling in the Snake a mile above Dug Bar. I hope I checked for TFRs before flying down the river.

clippwagon wrote:High line Slacklining is becoming an increasingly popular backcountry sport. There is currently a documentary called “Pushing the Line” that highlights a group in their pursuit to get the world record slack line length. It’s like 1500 or 2000 meters long! All I keep thinking while watching the show is how horrible it would be to all of a sudden see a person floating in the air before running into that line ending in tragedy for all!

FWIW I wondered if a NOTAM or TFR was over the event, so I called around to the land owner - it's 'public land' managed by the real BLM (USDI, Bureau of Land Management).

And the answer was: Nope.

Every time the video is viewed his cash register rings. It should have had a permit, But... the BLM didn't issue a permit or even know what was going on. So... no NOTAM, no TFR. Dunno if the crew cleaned up after themselves.

Little airplane, skinny wires, and not really THAT many of either in the back country. Most times we're lucky and there's just a near miss - if we even see the wires. The wire walker was lucky. He probably never even thought about little airplanes and dare devil pilots who sometimes fly between pinnacles -- just 'cause they're there.