AdamZ said:
JD I agree! A few questions if I may?
1) How long from your crash till your overdue time?
I was on a night flight, XC from Texas to the far northeast. It was right around 1300 hours when the engine made a loud bang, a couple of more bangs, and then everything went quiet and the prop stopped. NTSB found out that the crankshaft had given way. NTSB also found out that the FBO's chief mechanic had been pencil whipping the maintenance logs.
I had less than a thousand hours in the log book, so I was still a fairly new pilot. The drill was "aviate, navigate, communicate." This was well before GPS, so I was using pilotage and ded reckoning. Established best glide speed, started shutting down all electronics except for one com and the xponder, which went to 7700 and I hit IDENT. Turned on my flashlight, checked my kneepad notes against my sectional to get a rough idea where I was, which wasn't good. Mountainous terrain, heavily forested. If there were clearings, I couldn't see them.
Tuned 121.5 and did the mayday thing. Got a controller from the nearest (now bravo) airport. Explained my situation and explained I had filed a detailed flight plan with AFSS Fort Worth. He told me he had another controller calling them on the landline for details and asked me what my situation was. I asked him where the nearest airport was. He said nearest airport was over 25 nm away. I was only at 8500 msl and between 2000 and 4000 agl with the geography I was immediately over.
Told him I was going to drop the gear, drop the flaps and stall it into the trees. He reminded me of my final emergency checklist (open door, shut off fuel, turn off master), and I acknowledged.
He told me he'd lose me off the radar when I got below terrain, but he had a good fix on where I should be and was dispatching emergency personnel. I asked him to say a quick prayer for me as I was shutting everything down and going in. Last words I heard from him were, "Good luck."
I dropped the flaps, lowered the gear, opened the door (only one to open), turned off the fuel, hit the landing lights to see about where the "tree horizon" was, flew right down to the treeline then pulled back into a severe stall. At the point of the actual stall, I killed the master.
Hit the trees and all hell broke loose. Airplane fell from the tops of the trees down to the forest floor--some fifty-plus feet.
About all I remember after that is coming around and seeing fire on the starboard side and having to drag myself through it in order to get out of the airplane.
2) How long from the over due time till they found you?
I found out a few weeks later in the hospital that the rescue folks made it to the crash scene in a little over one hour from the time the ATC notified them. Between the detailed flight plan I filed and his radar spotting, they didn't have to look for long.
3) Did your ELT help or did they just calculate time and distance and find you along the route. We were told at a recent FAA seminar that ELTs basically stink and only do any good about 20% of the time.
Both NTSB and the FAA investigators told me later that the flight plan let the rescuers know the general area I was in, the ATC's call narrowed that general area down to less than ten square miles and that the ELT was the beacon that brought the rescue chopper right to the crash site.
I still stay in touch with some of the new generation PJs and Coast Guard rescue folks who work a lot of civilian aircraft incidents. They say the same thing: Flight plan lets them know a good approximate area to look and the ELT will take them right to the scene. The reason it works, they say, is because when you DON'T show up, they up and looking for you during the "lifespan" of your ELT battery/power pack.
This is why a flight plan, especially in remote or rural area is so important: It gives the SAR guys a place to start. Otherwise, you're looking for a needle (a lone ELT signal) in one helluva big haystack (such as West Texas, Montana, the Dakotas, northern Idaho, Alaska, northern Maine, etc).
I call it my "Holy Trifecta" and it consists of a filing a flight plan for all XC trips, getting flight following when available, and always always always checking my ELT before I launch.
Regards.
-JD
