Ditto. More fun on a weekday than should be allowed. Had a few moments of “weird,” and lots of aircraft looky-loos. Thanks, Jerome, for the great photo.

Checking my logs, I had my personal best max altitude yesterday (8668′ MSL) and flew for just over 3 hours.

Regarding the reserve deployment – it was lucky that the pilot happened to ask on launch what frequency we would be on. If he didn’t, I don’t think anyone would have known he was down. I don’t think anyone saw the deployment (he radioed it in after he landed), and even after flying directly over his position many times with him trying to describe his position, none of us could see him, his wing, or his reserve in the thick brush. Definitely pays to be on radio (even if there’s only one other person on the other end).

The higher altitudes were over at Pine, but agree – start getting above 6 or 7, best to move out of the immediate area. Saw a couple at eye level that were in the 6-7 range which was unsettling.

I also saw the downed PG pilot below BB and above the cistern. I circled a few times and could see him moving around and thought he must be okay, but decided it would be prudent to land and report the situation. No one in the LZ seemed overly concerned or felt the need to take action. One PG pilot radioed Marcello and told him of the situation. I later saw Gene in his UTV and told him and he replied there was not much we could do as the roads to that point were all locked and the pilot would have to walk out to a point they could pick him up.

I didn’t have a radio to hear communications from the downed pilot, but it seems an oversight for whoever did have communications with the pilot to not relay that information to the folks in the LZ. Maybe we need a club radio in the LZ with a speaker?

It would have been a bush-wacking walk for the downed pilot for maybe a half mile, but then he would have made it to good roads and an easy down hill hike to a point he could get a ride. Seems like he erred in trying to retrieve his gear rather than start walking right away while good daylight was available. Aerial rescues don’t do much for our reputation.

A couple of us were in radio communication with the pilot and with Gene/AJX while he was working on his gear. We also relayed his GPS coordinates to the LZ.

As sunset got closer, we recommended to him that he come back for his gear the following day and start hiking down, and also gave a suggested path down to the road. Gene drove up as far up the road as he could but the gates were locked and no one on duty at the station to provide access.

Just my opinion, but I think we did all we could, and communication with both the pilot and AJX were good (even though not everyone in the LZ was up on the situation it sounds like). Perhaps he could have dropped what he was doing much earlier to start hiking out (likely the best move in this situation), but pilots in the air were in no position to make that assessment for him. Looked pretty thick from where I was sitting, but I couldn’t assess if he had a 20 minute hike or a 3 hour bushwhack ahead of him.

I think Tom’s suggestion of a radio in the LZ is a great idea. It’s come up before but hasn’t gotten traction for some reason. Even if it’s not on all the time, maybe just turning it on in the event of an incident (after the frequency for response has been made known) so that folks on the ground can monitor easily?

I think the “half of the X” idea has come up before – seems like a simple solution (and we already have it). That is a good point about it possibly being mistaken for being half-deployed though.