New experience, emergency services called out

psween

psween

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Mar 16, 2015
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7MN3
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psween
I own 7MN3, a nice turf airstrip in SE MN. Been here and charted for 40 years, we've owned it and lived here the last 7. Have 2 based tenants plus me, so lots of flying on nice days.

Today we were at work (only about a mile from the strip) and saw 2 fire trucks and an ambulance come screaming out our way. Find out later a friendly passer by called 911 to report a plane crash after seeing one of our friends landing in his Dakota.

Just goes to show that although our local pilot community all knows about us, it's still unusual to the rest of the world to see a plane land in what looks like a soybean field!
 
Thought they witnessed a plane crash and called 911 - good. Didn't stop to help - bad.
 
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One of my neighbors lives right in the touch down zone and has a sign that depending on which way it's held is either a 6 or a 9 that the landing is rated with.

We were coming back from a flyin in my neighbor's Beech 18. He did a low pass prior to landing. One of the other passengers (not an airpark resident) asked that annoyed the neighbors. I pointed out that I had built my house on the runway on purpose and I'd be annoyed if he didn't make the low pass.
 
We call these "Good Intent" calls. We get them all the time in our fire district due to the interstate that passes through. Someone driving down the interstate sees smoke, etc., calls 911 to report it, has no idea where they even were or are, and thought it was important enough to call "someone", but not important enough to stop. We've spent a lot of time "patrolling" for smoke and/or accidents on the highway to find nothing, or find out it was actually 30 miles away and well outside our district.
 
Better to be safe than sorry.
 
Back when I was in the fire department we'd get these calls from time to time as we had a good chunk of I-95 in our territory. Sometimes they were as innocent as just getting the mile post wrong. Sometimes we'd end up 20 miles into the next county which always stuck out as we had yellow fire engines and they had red. You can cover ground pretty fast at 90 MPH.
 
The Canadian Snowbirds came into Gallup one time to refuel. Spectacular and colorful smoke arrival.

The airport and 911 received several calls about airplanes flying that are on fire just flew over our house.

How many fires put out red, white and blue smoke.??
 
flyingron said:
Back when I was in the fire department we'd get these calls from time to time as we had a good chunk of I-95 in our territory. Sometimes they were as innocent as just getting the mile post wrong. Sometimes we'd end up 20 miles into the next county which always stuck out as we had yellow fire engines and they had red. You can cover ground pretty fast at 90 MPH.
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That had to be back in the day. NFPA today requires trucks to be governed down to 55-65 mph depending on weight and water load. A little ridiculous getting on the interstate with all the lights going and can't keep pace with traffic. Usually just shut the lights and sirens down once we hit the on ramp.
 
psween said:
it's still unusual to the rest of the world to see a plane land in what looks like a soybean field!
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Have you considered harvesting the soybeans? ;)

midwestpa24 said:
NFPA today requires trucks to be governed down to 55-65 mph depending on weight and water load.
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Hmmm...I didn't hear the news that they had changed their name to the National Firetruck Postponement Authority.
 
midwestpa24 said:
That had to be back in the day. NFPA today requires trucks to be governed down to 55-65 mph depending on weight and water load. A little ridiculous getting on the interstate with all the lights going and can't keep pace with traffic. Usually just shut the lights and sirens down once we hit the on ramp.
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The acronym NFPA stands for 'Not For Practical Application'.. I am in the process of writing some policies that NFPA standards play into and it's slow going.
I believe the governed speed is 67 for gvwr of 26-50k and 60 for anything above 50k gvwr. Of course these limits exist because knuckleheads keep rolling apparatus in turns, but most of those are low speed events at intersections and limiting top speed won't do a thing......
 
midwestpa24 said:
We call these "Good Intent" calls. We get them all the time in our fire district due to the interstate that passes through. Someone driving down the interstate sees smoke, etc., calls 911 to report it, has no idea where they even were or are, and thought it was important enough to call "someone", but not important enough to stop. We've spent a lot of time "patrolling" for smoke and/or accidents on the highway to find nothing, or find out it was actually 30 miles away and well outside our district.
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I live in oil country. We have many gas flares at wells and various gas plants. My coworker is a volunteer rural firefighter. They regularly get calls about oil wells being on fire.

But I think my favorite story on this topic was when I went to court and another lawyer had flown in and spent the night. Based on her hotel and my knowledge of the route to the courthouse, she would have driven right past the airport that she had flown into. And yet she was absolutely insistent that she had watched, as she drove to the courthouse from her hotel that morning, a business jet landing in an open field.
 
timwinters said:
I would hope your airport was in an open field! :)
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She insisted it was a dirt field. I’m not sure what kind of farming background she had. We don’t have trees in North Dakota so “open” has a different meaning than in the rest of the world.
 
When I was flying paramotors (where you fly from any farm field or park that's big enough and you have permission) I would occasionally get visits from cops investigating a report of an airplane crash, often with "the pilot bailed out."
 
Homeland Insecurity has finally instructed the masses to "If you see something - report something". And it is working.
 
iamtheari said:
She insisted it was a dirt field. I’m not sure what kind of farming background she had. We don’t have trees in North Dakota so “open” has a different meaning than in the rest of the world.
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joke
jōk/
noun
  1. 1.
    a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline.
    "she was in a mood to tell jokes"
    synonyms: funny story, jest, witticism, quip;More
verb
  1. 1.
    make jokes; talk humorously or flippantly.
    "she could laugh and joke with her colleagues"
    synonyms: tell jokes, crack jokes; More
 
timwinters said:
joke
jōk/
noun
  1. 1.
    a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline.
    "she was in a mood to tell jokes"
    synonyms: funny story, jest, witticism, quip;More
verb
  1. 1.
    make jokes; talk humorously or flippantly.
    "she could laugh and joke with her colleagues"
    synonyms: tell jokes, crack jokes; More
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Never heard of it. :)
 
Dana said:
When I was flying paramotors (where you fly from any farm field or park that's big enough and you have permission) I would occasionally get visits from cops investigating a report of an airplane crash, often with "the pilot bailed out."
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When I was dropping jumpers, there was a parasail place a few miles away. Every few weeks we'd get a call from the police asking if we were missing any jumpers. They would get folks seeing the parasailing and call in that a skydiver had gone into the ocean.
 
Landing out Cross Country in my hang glider I've had several conversations with Police and EMS that I didn't crash when they got a 911 call. The intact glider and me walking around should have been a pretty good clue.

Best one was in South Georgia. Landed in a hay field and walked up to the road. Land owner came by and said "thank God you're human, we thought you were an alien".
 
I used to fly banners off a private grass strip that was about 1/2 mile from a highway. The strip was on an old farm and the property had a narrow stand of trees around the perimeter. Besides that stand of trees at the ends of the property, there was nothing but marshland between the farm property and the highway.

To keep from annoying the neighbors and to increase efficiency, we flew our patterns in tight and down at about 150ft. People on the highway would see a plane flying low above the trees then suddenly turn steeply and quickly dive down below the tree line and not come back up. Local 911 got so many calls from motorists on the highway about plane crashes there, they stopped bothering to show up or even call. They figured if there was ever an actual crash, someone from the farm would probably call.
 
A1Topgun said:
Homeland Insecurity has finally instructed the masses to "If you see something - report something". And it is working.
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Reminds me of all the Call 911 campaigns when 911 was first enacted as a national emergency number. Now we have people that use it for everything from a stuck lid on the pickle jar or to report their neighbors cockatiel mocking them.
 
Zeldman said:
The Canadian Snowbirds came into Gallup one time to refuel. Spectacular and colorful smoke arrival.

The airport and 911 received several calls about airplanes flying that are on fire just flew over our house.

How many fires put out red, white and blue smoke.??
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Years ago when I was young and stupid (as opposed to my current old and stupid), the local FBO had a 172 that was visibly burning oil, so he asked me to fly it 20 miles for maintenance. There was an FSS on the field, and the briefer on duty was a friend of mine, so I told her not to worry if she saw a little smoke when I took off. She asked me to call when I landed.

When I called half an hour later, she said it was a good thing I’d said something to her...she’d gotten a call from the sheriff, who had gotten a call from somebody who saw me trailing smoke and thought I was going down. :eek:
 
At my last job I had to monitor a scanner for EMS calls to our property. Nearby, I heard of a helicopter going down behind a treeline. 10 minutes or so later, the responding officer reported to the dispatcher that he found no wreckage, but did find someone loading an RC chopper into a van.
 
I have had someone call 911 when I landed my sailplane in a field next to a convenience store. I went to the store got a sandwich and was sitting by the glider eating my sandwich and waiting for my trailer to arrive,when the sheriff, ambulance and fire truck showed up.

On the other hand when I landed at a near by airport I had to call the Sheriff to come unlock the gate so I could get my trailer in and out of the airport.

Brian.
 
Hang 4 said:
Landing out Cross Country in my hang glider I've had several conversations with Police and EMS that I didn't crash when they got a 911 call. The intact glider and me walking around should have been a pretty good clue.

Best one was in South Georgia. Landed in a hay field and walked up to the road. Land owner came by and said "thank God you're human, we thought you were an alien".
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At least he didn't shoot at that giant bird until it let go of you....
 
On the other hand, I was at a very nice restaurant (Clydes in Broadlands, VA for you NoVa folk). I thought it was interesting that fire engines kept driving past our view. Then the manager came and told us we'd have to leave the building as it was on fire. I couldn't get out of the parking lot as the fire engines had blocked me in, so we sat there with the bottle of wine that I'd grabbed from the table and sat watching in the parking lot.
 
I once got dispatched to a report of a large plane on fire, putting out black smoke and the crew was bailing out. I was sitting in my patrol car watching at the time. It was a C-130 dropping PJs on routine training.

Another time we got a call (dispatch was required to forward every call to us, even if it was not our issue or was stupid) of a big black four-engined jet flying so low it was almost hitting the treetops. Yep, a C-130, and I had just seen that one fly over, too. At 2,000 AGL.
 
Remember the frantic 911 call in wussy California where there was a "horrific plane crash in the bay"? Emergency vehicles showed up to see two young men sitting on the wing of their Icon and eating a sandwich on the water, basking in the warm noon sun. :)

Down here in TX, we still get dumb 911 calls but the dispatchers are locals and usually smarter than the caller.
So while this wouldn't fly in CA, a "dangerous man with a gun" call in TX is handled with a question: "well what is he doing with the gun, ma'am?"
And when the hysterical caller replies "He's got it on his belt, in a holster while he's walking around, that criminal", the call is promptly terminated to allow a real emergency phonecall to get through.
 
In the few remaining tobacco growing areas, 911 gets plenty of drive-by calls for 'barn on fire', which usually turns out to be a farmer curing his leaves.
 
BigBadLou said:
Remember the frantic 911 call in wussy California where there was a "horrific plane crash in the bay"? Emergency vehicles showed up to see two young men sitting on the wing of their Icon and eating a sandwich on the water, basking in the warm noon sun. :)

Down here in TX, we still get dumb 911 calls but the dispatchers are locals and usually smarter than the caller.
So while this wouldn't fly in CA, a "dangerous man with a gun" call in TX is handled with a question: "well what is he doing with the gun, ma'am?"
And when the hysterical caller replies "He's got it on his belt, in a holster while he's walking around, that criminal", the call is promptly terminated to allow a real emergency phonecall to get through.
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Apples and oranges. I'm sure that police in Texas have a good idea of what's legal and what isn't in regard to guns, but is their aviation knowledge any better than in other states?





Are you sure that no one has called in
 
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