Friend of mine went down

[Sir Puma]

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/aug/ ... le-downed/

Thankfully he's ok. Real nasty black eye with a 3-4" cut below it where his face hit the instrument panel with is glasses on. Search and rescue got most of his gear out of the wreckage but tomorrow we'll be headed out there to get the rest of the stuff and hopefully find his drivers license that got dropped out there in the brush. :-/

[ozzy72]

At least he is in one (slightly battered) piece. Glad to hear he is okay, we've lost too many good people of late.

[Sir Puma]

Thanks, he's amazing and blessed. We were out there today salvaging all his personal belongings and anything we could easily pull like the O2 tanks and seats. I wish I had my tool box with me, I would have pulled the instruments. I may still see if I can do that. He managed to land on the only flat hill top (really a flat peak to a cliff surrounded knoll. He managed to miss all the large trees and come in right at ground level.

First his right wingtip hit a couple real tall but thin trees shearing them off and taking off the outer 2-3 feet of his right wing (splitting the aileron in half). This gave him a slight right hand spin as he skimmed the ground. Then his nose wheel hit a stump ripping it off and digging the stump out of the ground. This killed most of his forward momentum and cause the aircraft to bounce. It then dropped on the ground a plane length further.

All this was at 10 PM, in the pitch black over a heavily wooded and very hilly area with main transmission power lines and radio/cell towers. The aircraft was a Cessna 206. Had he been 10 feet higher he would have clipped off the other side of the hill and dropped about 100 feet into a deep valley. Another 10 feet lower and he would have smacked nose first into a cliff. Ten feet to the left or right and he would have run nose first into several very large pines.

[Sir Puma]

The tail was bent down bad right behind the aft bulkhead. The main bulkhead where the main landing gear is attached was sheared, the floor of the fuselage on the left side was severely dented up and the left main gear was bent way down. The left door was opened and folded hard on the stump it landed on. It looked like the engine mounts were either bent or broken but the engine looked remarkably well. The two lower props were folded under but the top one was fine. Windscreen was popped out at the bottom but otherwise undamaged and none of the other windows were damaged either. Left wing had a few large dents in the leading edge and the right wing (aside from loosing a large chunk of the tip) had a large gash and dent in the leading edge up to the forward bulkhead. The wing tanks were not breached. His chest hit the yoke hard enough to drive the whole instrument panel about an inch back and his face broke the sun shield. His glasses cut his face and gave him a very nasty black eye but amazingly the glasses weren't damaged.

All in all, considering what could have happened, I believe our Divine Creator had a hand in giving him a three point landing on a 40x100 foot clearing in the midst of very tall trees.

[Sir Puma]

I have some photos on my photobucket account. I'll only post a link since they are big pictures and more than a couple. http://s561.photobucket.com/albums/ss56 ... =slideshow

[pfevrier]

Very lucky guy...