Glider fatality in Idaho

I'm sad to report that we lost one of our own on Wednesday. Thierry
Thys was participating in an Idaho glider safari and crashed sometime
that afternoon or evening on his return to Arco's airport. SAR didn't
locate the wreckage until just before dark on Thursday, and it was not
accessible until either that night or Friday morning. A friend who is
on the safari reported that Thierry was killed on impact. I had held
off posting since those of us who knew Thierry were holding out hope
that he had landed out and would be found alive. Sadly, that did not
happen.

Thierry was an avid aviation adventurer, flying his motor glider from
Point Barrow, Alaska to the tip of South America, over a two year
period. I knew he had other aircraft, and
http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_13176488
shows him with his MI2 Russian helicopter -- something I was unaware
of.

Several of us who knew Thierry have been discussing the need for a
repository for SPOT Messenger shared page URL's. From what I've heard,
Thierry did not have a SPOT, which is a learning in and of itself.
But, even if he had one, it would not have done any good in the first
few critical hours of searching if no one on the scene knew how to
access it. I've shared my SPOT URL with a number of friends and
family, but none of them might be known to SAR or reachable when
needed. So I hope that Thierry's loss can have at least one positive
outcome by getting us to develop such a repository (totally voluntary
of course), perhaps on a public SSA page or similar. Please post your
thoughts on this idea so we can hopefully move forward.

In ending, I offer my condolences to Thierry's family and friends.

Martin

On Aug 22, 8:52*am, Hellman wrote:
I'm sad to report that we lost one of our own on Wednesday. Thierry
Thys was participating in an Idaho glider safari and crashed sometime
that afternoon or evening on his return to Arco's airport. SAR didn't
locate the wreckage until just before dark on Thursday, and it was not
accessible until either that night or Friday morning. A friend who is
on the safari reported that Thierry was killed on impact. I had held
off posting since those of us who knew Thierry were holding out hope
that he had landed out and would be found alive. Sadly, that did not
happen.

Thierry was an avid aviation adventurer, flying his motor glider from
Point Barrow, Alaska to the tip of South America, over a two year
period. I knew he had other aircraft, andhttp://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_13176488
shows him with his MI2 Russian helicopter -- something I was unaware
of.

Several of us who knew Thierry have been discussing the need for a
repository for SPOT Messenger shared page URL's. From what I've heard,
Thierry did not have a SPOT, which is a learning in and of itself.
But, even if he had one, it would not have done any good in the first
few critical hours of searching if no one on the scene knew how to
access it. I've shared my SPOT URL with a number of friends and
family, but none of them might be known to SAR or reachable when
needed. So I hope that Thierry's loss can have at least one positive
outcome by getting us to develop such a repository (totally voluntary
of course), perhaps on a public SSA page or similar. Please post your
thoughts on this idea so we can hopefully move forward.

In ending, I offer my condolences to Thierry's family and friends.

Martin

Very sad - it has been a bad year for losing friends.

I agree that a common self-service repository would be good. Perhaps
the soaring server could be a home for it? It would be nice to be able
to search by pilot, day, event (say a contest or safari where you
might want to look at multiple pilots at the same time).

9B

On Aug 23, 4:03*am, Andy wrote:

I agree that a common self-service repository would be good. Perhaps
the soaring server could be a home for it? It would be nice to be able
to search by pilot, day, event (say a contest or safari where you
might want to look at multiple pilots at the same time).

There is already a common self-service repository that has been used
last season at Omarama with some success, and by some pilots in Canada
near Inveremere this season. I think we currently have about 30 spots
registered.

I provide the system on a voluntary basis and am happy to have other
sites use it.

http://map.xinqu.net/spot/index.html

--
Philip Plane

Very sad to loose any soaring pilot.

Possibly a GPS enabled 406mhz ELT (or manually activated PLB) might
have alerted and guided immediate responders directly to the scene.

See http://aviation.derosaweb.net/presen...2008.11.19.pdf
for more information. Might save your life.

- John DeRosa

I agree with Martin that a common repository is a very good idea.

I am currently in that safari in Idaho. The area of search was very
small and close to the airport this time because the day wasn't really
a good day, so he landed early, and this was his second flight that
day. It was meant to be a short and casual flight. Had this been a
serious soaring day, it could have been days or weeks before he was
found.

-Gen

On Aug 22, 9:52*am, Hellman wrote:
I'm sad to report that we lost one of our own on Wednesday. Thierry
Thys was participating in an Idaho glider safari and crashed sometime
that afternoon or evening on his return to Arco's airport. SAR didn't
locate the wreckage until just before dark on Thursday, and it was not
accessible until either that night or Friday morning. A friend who is
on the safari reported that Thierry was killed on impact. I had held
off posting since those of us who knew Thierry were holding out hope
that he had landed out and would be found alive. Sadly, that did not
happen.

Thierry was an avid aviation adventurer, flying his motor glider from
Point Barrow, Alaska to the tip of South America, over a two year
period. I knew he had other aircraft, andhttp://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_13176488
shows him with his MI2 Russian helicopter -- something I was unaware
of.

Several of us who knew Thierry have been discussing the need for a
repository for SPOT Messenger shared page URL's. From what I've heard,
Thierry did not have a SPOT, which is a learning in and of itself.
But, even if he had one, it would not have done any good in the first
few critical hours of searching if no one on the scene knew how to
access it. I've shared my SPOT URL with a number of friends and
family, but none of them might be known to SAR or reachable when
needed. So I hope that Thierry's loss can have at least one positive
outcome by getting us to develop such a repository (totally voluntary
of course), perhaps on a public SSA page or similar. Please post your
thoughts on this idea so we can hopefully move forward.

In ending, I offer my condolences to Thierry's family and friends.

Martin

On Aug 22, 11:52*am, Hellman wrote:
I'm sad to report that we lost one of our own on Wednesday. Thierry
Thys was participating in an Idaho glider safari and crashed sometime
that afternoon or evening on his return to Arco's airport. SAR didn't
locate the wreckage until just before dark on Thursday, and it was not
accessible until either that night or Friday morning. A friend who is
on the safari reported that Thierry was killed on impact. I had held
off posting since those of us who knew Thierry were holding out hope
that he had landed out and would be found alive. Sadly, that did not
happen.

Thierry was an avid aviation adventurer, flying his motor glider from
Point Barrow, Alaska to the tip of South America, over a two year
period. I knew he had other aircraft, andhttp://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_13176488
shows him with his MI2 Russian helicopter -- something I was unaware
of.

Several of us who knew Thierry have been discussing the need for a
repository for SPOT Messenger shared page URL's. From what I've heard,
Thierry did not have a SPOT, which is a learning in and of itself.
But, even if he had one, it would not have done any good in the first
few critical hours of searching if no one on the scene knew how to
access it. I've shared my SPOT URL with a number of friends and
family, but none of them might be known to SAR or reachable when
needed. So I hope that Thierry's loss can have at least one positive
outcome by getting us to develop such a repository (totally voluntary
of course), perhaps on a public SSA page or similar. Please post your
thoughts on this idea so we can hopefully move forward.

In ending, I offer my condolences to Thierry's family and friends.

Martin

Martin,

Sorry to hear the sad news, and my condolences to the family.

Mark Hawkins and I (mostly Mark) have been developing the capability
to display multiple SPOT tracks on a single map, and this technology
has been used successfully at several U.S and international contests
this year. In addition to contests, it can be used on a regular or ad-
hoc basis by clubs or groups (like the Idaho safari group for
instance) . To see an example of club usage, go to
http://www.abqsoaring.org/links_SPOT.php and click on the GoogleMaps
link (http://asctracking.jgate.de/files/asctracking.htm) . We have
made this technology available this year for free, and we plan to
offer it next year on a subscription basis for a nominal fee. See
http://hawketracking.com for more details.

Please accept my apologies in advance if this comes across as a
product plug. It is, and it isn't. The primary reason we developed
this technology was precisely so clubs, contest retrieve staff and/or
safari groups could keep track of SPOT-equipped pilots without having
to access each pilot's individual 'shared' page on the SPOT website.
We hope that clubs and contest staff will encourage cross-country
pilots to get a SPOT unit and use it in TRACK mode so retrieves and/or
emergency support can be initiated in a proactive manner, rather than
waiting until a pilot is long overdue.

Regards,

TA

Having been involved with two events that have had fatalities this
year I think if the SSA could add a link to the Member Locator Feature
so members could add the link to their spot page would be not
difficult and would be of great use in these types of situations.

At one event I offered to keep track of all the pages and out of 26
pilots I had one person send me their shared page. I have found that
collecting Spot Share pages can be challenging.

With one of the fatalites we knew that the plane had crashed but did
not have positive confirmation of who it was. It was useful to check
the spots I had links for to rule out who it was not.

I will send this suggestion of the SSA. I am sure they will have to
consider it but I think a well known central location for storing
these links we be of great benefit for event organizers or even
informal groups that are flying together.

Brian

SoaringNV, like other commercial glider operations, has a "Spot spot"
on our web site www.soaringnv.com Anyone is welcome to register
their Spot there, although obviously it's meant mostly for folks
flying out of Minden. I think the idea of a centralized data base
makes a lot of sense. I also encourage clubs and commercial operators
to register the pilots who are flying from their facility and track
them during the day. Fred

On Aug 22, 9:08*pm, Fred wrote:
SoaringNV, like other commercial glider operations, has a "Spot spot"
on our web site www.soaringnv.com *Anyone is welcome to register
their Spot there, although obviously it's meant mostly for folks
flying out of Minden. *I think the idea of a centralized data base
makes a lot of sense. *I also encourage clubs and commercial operators
to register the pilots who are flying from their facility and track
them during the day. *Fred

I've known Thierry Thys since the late 60's flying with BASA. I
remember a flight at the 1970 Wave camp where he completed what was at
that time the 3rd longest flight in history, landing at dusk with the
runway at Minden lit up by car headlights.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family.

Mike Bamberg

At 04:45 23 August 2009, Mike Bamberg wrote:
I've known Thierry Thys since the late 60's flying with BASA. I
remember a flight at the 1970 Wave camp where he completed what was at
that time the 3rd longest flight in history, landing at dusk with the
runway at Minden lit up by car headlights.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family.

Mike Bamberg

Thanks for that memory, Mike. I never met Thierry in person, but we
talked on the phone, exchanged letters and e-mails, and I eventually
bought a sailplane from him. I don't remember if it was that year (1970)
or a couple later, that he flew a BS1 from Minden to Winslow, Arizona.
Only a very brief write-up in SOARING about it where he said he had been
"a bit slow, but that will be rectified next time."

He seemed like he did things for his own adventures, but seemed willing to
talk about them one on one with others, if you just asked. He told me of
several of his flights and some of his aviation adventures. My Dad had
the opprtunity to meet him at a Stemme gathering in Moriarty. Too bad he
wasn't aware that he was talking with the man that sold me my BS1.
Probably could have gotten more flying tales from his past.

Rest in Peace, Thierry.

Steve Leonard