Path: mythinc!moon!pixar!uupsi!psinntp!uunet!think.com!ames!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!bang!bam From: bam@bang.uucp (Bret A. Marquis) Newsgroups: rec.aviation Subject: The rise and fall of N3VD Message-ID: <1992May25.035830.5320@bang.uucp> Date: 25 May 92 03:58:30 GMT Reply-To: bam@Berkeley.edu Organization: Marquis Co., San Diego Lines: 87 The Questair Venture crashed yesterday afternoon. My co-builder was flying the craft from Portland to St. George Utah then planning on flying here to San Diego. He had logged over 30 uneventful hours on the plane to date. 11,500 ft near Ely, Nevada, oil pressure started dropping rapidly, three minutes later the prop came to a sudden stop. In the high mountainous terrain he was flying over, 11,500ft put him about 2000 ft agl. A dead stick landing to a grassy field ended when the field turned out to be an over grown, soft, wet stream bed. Nose gear collapsed, left main collapsed and the plane cartwheeled a number of times before coming to rest inverted. Left wing was torn off, the right wing broken open, the empennage broken and twisted. Dave says the damage is beyond repair. If anything its reassuring to note that the cockpit area itself was not badly damaged. How he broke his wrist is unknown but his minor injuries attest to the strength of the structure and design. As far as I'm concerned at this early stage, the failure was internal in the factory new Continental engine, the airframe itself was undamaged until landing. The canopy had broken at some point during the crash allowing Dave to crawl out with only minor injuries. A broken wrist and a lacerated scalp caused by releasing the seat belt and dropping head first onto the broken canopy. The ELT had not yet been delivered. I elected to purchase a 3 band 121.5, 243 and 406 mhz ELT. This was backordered so no ELT was in the plane at the time. He had not filed a flight plan so no search was started. I called his family last night to see if he had actually departed Portland and if they had heard from him. He had departed but had not checked in. I did not know the destination airport positively or an arrival contact name so did not attempt to find him last night. This morning, no word from his family, I started calling people that might know where he was going. Armed with a few phone numbers I called Cedar City FSS for the airport contact number for Grassy Meadows and while I called there, the FSS called the tower at St. George UT in case he had diverted there. No luck. Finally reaching the person with whom he was supposed to meet confirmed that he had not arrived as scheduled. The next call was to San Diego FSS to have an Alert Notification (ALNOT) sent out. The response to that was almost immediate. The local Ely, NV Sheriff had notified Reno FSS that they had a plane down and had taken the pilot to the hospital. Reno called San Diego. The ALNOT notifies Scott AF base that would have (according the FSS) started a CAP search after about 2 hours. Now all the 'What If's start.. ` What if the canopy had not broken. Dave would be trapped inside the plane, unable to get out. The crash occured saturday at 2 PM. I didn't start the search until I was sure he hadn`t just landed somewhere and not checked in. I didn't become concerned until Sunday morning. The plane had no ELT and dave did not file a flight plan. Nor was he talking with anyone when he went down. No fire, but the potential was there with the leaking fuel tanks (about 50 gallons on the scene). Had an actual search been started, CAP would not have been notified for several hours after the ALNOT was sent. They would have only my assumptions for his route and destination. Granted in this case he flew loran direct and was in a straight line between Portland and St. George, thats still a lot of territory to cover by sight. A good chance that he would not have been found quickly. He would have spent at least 2 nights trapped inside the inverted plane. As it turns out, he waited until 4AM and decided to walk out. Walked 12 miles until he flagged down a passing pickup truck who took him to a nearby Ranger station. He had no survival gear, no good walking shoes or even a good jacket. He spent a very cold night in those mountains and was extremely lucky he found a dirt road leading to civilization instead of getting lost. Dave is spending the night in the hospital in Ely. Suffering from the broken wrist, facial lacerations and exposure. As for me, I'm in shock. The plane was over two years in planning and construction and the way Dave describes it, will soon belong to the insurance company. The plane is a total loss. It would have been nice to solo it once though. That's two airplanes in two months. (The Mooney went down last month). If I were a religious person, I might find some significance in that. Bret Marquis Row Boat CF2079CW