And now it’s been found.
30-60 miles from where the pilot landed. A typical eastern US rural county of rolling hills & hollows, creeks, farms, and forests. And a couple of small towns.
Shouldn’t that be hollers and cricks?
There was also the Learjet that crashed in New Hampshire - it took three years to locate. Not the Sahara Desert, not the Indian Ocean… they couldn’t find a jet in New Hampshire.
Did the pilot take the Emergency locator transmitter with him?
Aircrews carry an AN/PRC-90 (or whatever replaced it) in their survival vests. In civilian aircraft, the ELT is usually attached to the airframe.
My sarcastic question aside, why did it take so long to locate the plane?
I suspect two reasons: 1) It flew farther than expected; and 2) Crashes are sometimes hard to find (see the CAP Powerpoint pictures).
Until we see some aerial photos of the wreckage site we won’t know why it took awhile. If nobody observed the impact and there wasn’t much post-crash fire, it’ll sit there patiently until a human gets to wherever it is. Whether overhead in a search aircraft or on foot.
The Earth, or even New Hampshire, is a very big place when you have to walk the whole thing.
They’ve never found this important guy’s plane in Alaska: Hale Boggs - Wikipedia
Maybe if he was a Senator one of the 12 people living between Anchorage and Juneau would have looked for him.
That and I don’t thing the plane had a transponder but I could be wrong. It’s a lot easier to track on radar that way.
As if there was radar between Anchorage and Juneau. I’d not be surprised to find there’s not, at least not below the flight levels.
Here in 2023 there’s an awful lot of the US Southwest with no effective radar coverage until you’re in the mid teens. 50 years ago in Alaska? Fuggedabudit.
I would expect the Alaskan coast to be well covered because of the Cold War. As for the Southwest, you follow the roads.
I don’t follow. Why would anybody, much less the Russians be interested in penetrating US/Canadian airspace in the area between Anchorage and Juneau? There is nothing there. Continued nothing for quite a ways, too.
The DEW Line: Cold War Defense at the Top of the World
There’s a map at the top of the page. I’m guessing that Magiver is suggesting good radar coverage in Alaska because of the DEW line. There used to be a radar station here in Birch Bay (Blaine Air Force Station), but it was shut down in 1979. The DEW line was decommissioned in 1989. It’s been replaced by the North Warning System, but that came after the Cold War (well, 1988 – close enough).
All of that defense radar stuff was about detecting incoming Russians from hundreds of miles away over the ocean. Not about detecting airplanes scud-running along the shoreline or hugging the terrain inland.
Citing myself from one of the other dedicated USMC F-35 crash threads:
Think about it. In a war scenario the object is to penetrate your enemy’s air space at it’s weakest point.
Yes, but from where? Kamchatka? AFAIK, the USSR never had any true aircraft carriers, and they couldn’t handle any aircraft with the range to penetrate US airspace “at it’s weakest” and then fly the 1000+ miles it would take to get anywhere near anything worth bombing.
Russia is 55 miles from Alaska in the Bering Strait and they have long rang bombers which they seem to enjoy flying around Alaska.
Wingsuit skydiver was decapitated by plane’s wing 20 seconds into jump: trial
Nicolas Galy, 40, was the first of two skydivers who were released from the single-engine Pilatus plane at 14,000 feet over the town of Bouloc-en-Quercy in July 2018, reported The Times.
Moments later, the aircraft’s pilot, identified only as 64-year-old Alain C, rapidly descended and caught up with the skydivers as they were gliding in their wingsuits.
The plane’s left wing and a strut clipped Galy, beheading him, the court in the city of Montauban heard this week.
Emphasis mine:
Alain defended himself in court, insisting that he had done nothing wrong and that Galy “did not follow the expected course and should never have been on that course.”
I’m pretty sure that a skydiver has right-of-way over aircraft, regardless of the ‘expected course’. It was Alain C.'s responsibility to not collide with the skydiver.