Landout survival - parachute or otherwise

If I landout, or worse parachute, I'll be ****ed and won't be a 'happy
camper'. I'll want to go home with my glider ASAP. To hell with the
fishing kit, K-Bar knife and other woodsmen stuff. I'll conceed that
adequate water, a power bar and space blankets are nice.

My priorities a

1. Tell concerned folks exactly where I am, what my condition is, and convey
the idea that I want to get picked up ASAP. I want to carefully select who
I tell about the situation.

2. Get myself and the glider extracted with the least fuss possible
involving natives, police or professional SAR people. I don't want to sound
a general emergency with a ELT or PLB unless absolutely neccessary.

3. Get crew and myself to an establishment serving food and beer.

To this end there are two almost magical devices, Globalstar/Iridium
sat-phones and GPS. We already have GPS so we need phones. Reasonably small
sat-phones cost around $500 and a service contract with zero minutes is
trivial. If you actually need to call from the wild, $2/min is also
trivial. The phones can be rented for $30/week for use at contests and
camps. With the phone, you can even make reservations for food and beer.

Bill Daniels

On Mar 2, 11:42 am, "Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:
If I landout, or worse parachute, I'll be ****ed and won't be a 'happy
camper'. I'll want to go home with my glider ASAP. To hell with the
fishing kit, K-Bar knife and other woodsmen stuff. I'll conceed that
adequate water, a power bar and space blankets are nice.

My priorities a

1. Tell concerned folks exactly where I am, what my condition is, and convey
the idea that I want to get picked up ASAP. I want to carefully select who
I tell about the situation.

2. Get myself and the glider extracted with the least fuss possible
involving natives, police or professional SAR people. I don't want to sound
a general emergency with a ELT or PLB unless absolutely neccessary.

3. Get crew and myself to an establishment serving food and beer.

To this end there are two almost magical devices, Globalstar/Iridium
sat-phones and GPS. We already have GPS so we need phones. Reasonably small
sat-phones cost around $500 and a service contract with zero minutes is
trivial. If you actually need to call from the wild, $2/min is also
trivial. The phones can be rented for $30/week for use at contests and
camps. With the phone, you can even make reservations for food and beer.

Bill Daniels

Shoot Bill, you need to come fly out here in the flatlands. Ive never
landed out without having fun! And with the population density of at
least 1 house/square mile and endless flat fields, practically runway
quality, you're never a long walk from a phone.

On Mar 2, 8:42 am, "Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:
If I landout, or worse parachute, I'll be ****ed and won't be a 'happy
camper'. I'll want to go home with my glider ASAP.

Bill, like Tony said, you need to come out to Iowa and chill. Landing
out here is how I relax and get away from it all!

Seriously though, if you parachute and live would you really be
****ed? Well, yes of course ****ed that the plane is totaled or that
someone else screwed up and ran into me, or that I F'ed up and nearly
bought it; but at the end of the day you've got your life and not much
else would matter I'd think.

If landing out is such a pain as to set your nerves on edge it seems
like kind of takes the fun out of the whole thing. I realize that
landing out in the mountains only 20 air miles from home can lead to a
multi-day retrieve and a survival situation

Yea, we got it pretty good out here in farm country (blizzards and
tornados aside). Bring your ship out and fly Region 7 or just buy
some tows at Ames in mid to late May. It's the lowest stress cross-
country flying available I bet. Heck, we leave our maps and gps's at
home and pack a cooler with beer in the glider. The fields are so
easy for landing out I sometimes crack a cold one on approach once I'm
low enough to varify no wires. The farm girls are legendary!










Only legendary.

MM

On Mar 2, 9:42 am, "Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:
If I landout, or worse parachute, I'll be ****ed and won't be a 'happy
camper'. I'll want to go home with my glider ASAP. To hell with the
fishing kit, K-Bar knife and other woodsmen stuff. I'll conceed that
adequate water, a power bar and space blankets are nice.

My priorities a

1. Tell concerned folks exactly where I am, what my condition is, and convey
the idea that I want to get picked up ASAP. I want to carefully select who
I tell about the situation.

2. Get myself and the glider extracted with the least fuss possible
involving natives, police or professional SAR people. I don't want to sound
a general emergency with a ELT or PLB unless absolutely neccessary.

3. Get crew and myself to an establishment serving food and beer.

To this end there are two almost magical devices, Globalstar/Iridium
sat-phones and GPS. We already have GPS so we need phones. Reasonably small
sat-phones cost around $500 and a service contract with zero minutes is
trivial. If you actually need to call from the wild, $2/min is also
trivial. The phones can be rented for $30/week for use at contests and
camps. With the phone, you can even make reservations for food and beer.

Bill Daniels

For off-field landings in places like Nevada, the satellite phones are
the best option. As a poor alternative, you can also use your
radio's emergency frequency to attempt contacting an airliner and ask
them to make a phone call to your crew. It is important that you
state that this is NOT an emergency on each announcement before
someone replies.
An FAA official explained it to me that this would be a perfectly
normal use of the frequency with no subsequent ramifications.

Bela Szalai

An Arizona pilot used this technique last spring to contact the
outside world after he landed out on an Indian reservation in the
mountains west of Galveston, Texas.

The retrieve was quite an adventure!

~ted/2NO

On Mar 2, 7:59 pm, "Tuno" wrote:
An Arizona pilot used this technique last spring to contact the
outside world after he landed out on an Indian reservation in the
mountains west of Galveston, Texas.

The retrieve was quite an adventure!

~ted/2NO

Do you mean it was an adventure because he used an emergy frequency?

Bela Szalai

snip Do you mean it was an adventure because he used an emergy
frequency? /snip

No; the adventure started later. The glider's trailer is still out in
the desert somewhere ...

"Tuno" wrote in news:1172890758.947266.310290@
8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com:

An Arizona pilot used this technique last spring to contact the
outside world after he landed out on an Indian reservation in the
mountains west of Galveston, Texas.

The retrieve was quite an adventure!

~ted/2NO


Mountains? Indian Reservation?

How far west of Galveston was he? 1000 miles?

-Bill



--
Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service
-------http://www.NewsDemon.com------
Unlimited Access, Anonymous Accounts, Uncensored Broadband Access

Mountains? Indian Reservation?

How far west of Galveston was he? 1000 miles?

That sounds about right. Of course it was a bit north of due west.

~tuno

Bill Daniels wrote:

To this end there are two almost magical devices, Globalstar/Iridium
sat-phones and GPS. We already have GPS so we need phones. Reasonably small
sat-phones cost around $500 and a service contract with zero minutes is
trivial. If you actually need to call from the wild, $2/min is also
trivial. The phones can be rented for $30/week for use at contests and
camps.

These prices are a huge improvement over the last time I checked. What
companies offer these prices? These phones would also be a good way to
keep in touch with your crew while flying and out of radio range, and
might be at least as effective as a PLB.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly
* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org