"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
You're flying happily over the desert in your small plane, in bright,
clear
weather, on your IFR flight plan. You notice a plume of smoke a short
distance away at your nine o'clock, and looking more carefully, you see
what
looks like a stranded car with some people standing around it. You'd like
to
investigate just to see if it might be someone who needs help.

So just tell ATC what you've seen and tell them you'd like to go have a
look. If, for whatever reason, they can't accommodate you, they'll probably
ask you to tell them as accurately as possible where the incident has
happened so they can alert the police or whoever. If, on the other hand,
they can handle a deviation, they'll co-ordinate this deviation with you.
They'll leave getting there up to you - don't expect them to vector you
there (let's face it, they know exactly where you are right now, but the
chances are you'll be telling them something like "about five miles to the
northwest", and they can't exactly give you an accurate course).

If the problem appears potentially serious (e.g. there's a car on fire
upside-down in a field, thus implying that it mightn't be visible from the
road, so the emergency services mightn't be aware) then declare a PAN. The
controller can then give you the required priority, and other pilots on
frequency will be aware of what's going on as they'll hear it's a PAN call.

On a related note (whence the crosspost to r.a.p.), has this ever happened
to
you? That is, have you ever seen something that looked like a possible
case
of people in distress on the ground and decided to go over and take a look
and/or report it to ATC?

Well, it happened to me (and presumably everyone else) on my PPL radio exam.
Actually, what I mean is that the "PAN" part of the oral exam involved me
supposedly spotting a life-raft in the water below me and reporting it to
ATC via a PAN call.

I've never had something like this for real, but there was one occasion when
I knew an instructor from our club was considering sending someone on a solo
navex in a particular area, and once I got airborne for my own flight I saw
that the conditions differed markedly from the forecast/actuals report. I
asked ATC to relay a message to the club to say that the weather down there
wasn't up to a solo student on a navex, which they kindly did.

David C