A call on 121.5

The day started off quite normally.

I had a day off, the sun was shining, and the Auster was just waiting to
be flown. The airfield the plane lives at is rather sleepy on a weekday
owing to be a farm airfield with only a few aircraft - so I was quite
surprised to see quite a lot of activity. There was a Jodel arriving, a
visiting Europa on the ground, and a couple of the microlights (think
"sport aircraft") pulled out of the hangar. I pre-flighted the Auster
and put another 20 litres of fuel in the tank, and gave the aircraft a
little bit of a clean.

The Europa was in the way, so I tracked down its owner, and we moved the
plane off to one side. I taxied out, did a run up, took off and went.

Visibility was great. I could see to my east the Cumbrian hills in
England thirty odd miles away, to the north, the mountains of Scotland,
and to the west, the Mountains of Mourne in Northern Ireland. I was just
having fun - at 3000 feet, I tried the Auster's rather good slow flight
characteristics to keep station with a cargo ship crossing the Irish
Sea to the north of the island, which was headed into wind.

After about 45 minutes, I decided to come back to the airfield and do a
couple of touch-and-goes. As I flew downwind, I saw that the Skyraider
microlight (which is a small 2 seat tandem taildragger, fabric covered -
it looks vaguely similar to any small tandem taildragger like a Cub)
hadn't stopped at the runway interesection, but had commenced his
back-taxi down runway 06. Perhaps his radio was not on or possibly on
the wrong frequency - never mind, I reduced power to about 1700 RPM and
just loitered on downwind, waiting for him to turn around and take off.

Eventually, he started his takeoff roll, so I recommenced my downwind
leg. I saw him break ground fairly quickly, and turned my attention back
to the imminent approach and landing. With ten knots or so of wind on
the nose I had no problems with doing a short field landing (the normal
power off approach speed in the Auster being only 50 mph). I stopped,
reconfigure the aircraft for takeoff, and took off again.

Mindful that the Skyraider was slower than me, and I'd never seen it
flying anyway so I didn't know exactly how well it climbed (or not), I
kept a very good lookout so I didn't run him over. I looked around hard
for him - I'd not heard a radio transmission so I didn't know what his
intentions were.

Suddenly, I saw on the top of the Bride Hills (some small hills, around
200 feet tall, about half a mile off the departure end of 06 - actually
a terminal moraine from a glacier of the last Ice Age) some objects on
the hilltop. I hadn't seen them on my way in, and from the distance I
was at, I thought it must be some agricultural machinery. But as I drew
closer, it became very clear it was the Skyraider - in three pieces, the
fuselage pointing 180 degrees from the original direction of
departure...

About then, someone on the ground calls asking whether the Skyraider had
gone down. I told them that yes, I was looking at it. I put some flaps
out and slowed the Auster, and orbited the site, looking for signs of
life - and saw someone crawling out of the wreckage. I reported this
back to the person on the ground. At that point, an ATC facility who was
monitoring the frequency from Carlisle (some 60 miles away), who had
heard my rather distance attenuated report started wanting details - I
told them that it was in the Isle of Man. Unfortunately, his
transmissions were rather broken. I switched to 121.5 and made a blind
call - but I was too low to really make out the reply. I climbed to 3000
feet to be well above the local geography and get some more radio range,
and called again. I passed on the details (including the phonetic
spelling of the entire name of the farm airfield and the village) that I
knew.

Fortunately, a Royal Navy helicopter happened to be about 12 minutes
flying time to the south. I gave the helicopter pilot a description of
the location of the accident site, and told him I'd orbit overhead at
3000'. Once I saw him in the vicinity, I gave him a final vector to the
site. I watched him survey the site, and then returned to land myself
since there was nothing more that I could do at this stage.

From what I've heard now, both occupants of the Skyraider received some
painful but non life threatening injuries (broken bones). I think the
Navy helicopter might have taken them to the hospital. I've still not
heard who the second person on board was - the first one was a pilot
from the PFA (the equivalent of the EAA) who was checking the aircraft
out - probably part of an annual inspection. I still don't know for
certain why the aircraft crashed - however, some speculation is that
being quite a low powered aircraft, it couldn't outclimb the Bride Hills
adequately and got caught in the curl-over in the lee side of the hills.
But this is just speculation at this stage.

I wish a speedy recovery for the injured. The aircraft was a 'hangar
mate' aircraft of the glider club.

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