JS-1 Lands In Dry Lake South of Moriarty, NM

Close, Bumper, but actually, if conditions permit, it's best to land at an airport. With cold beer available.

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 3:54:28 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Close, Bumper, but actually, if conditions permit, it's best to land at an airport. With cold beer available.

I landed on a dry lake once, I had not thought about the depth perception issue before hand. I had to just let the glider find the ground. Was lucky enough to talk a passing airplane down to pick me up and fly me back to the airport so I could get my car and some helpers. They buzzed me and I contacted them on 122.8. While I was gone a passing trucker (the road was two miles from the dry lake had called in an airplane crash. When I came to get my glider near dark the cops and ambulance where there. This was the only time other than a check ride where I have been asked for my pilot's license.

This brings old memories. I have a similar photo of my tracks around my glider when I landed in a similar "dry lake" 15 years ago. In my case the mud was way to deep to walk away from the glider. It was bottomless. I was 1 mile from the shore and needed a helicopter rescue. I know much better now to avoid dry lakes and as Bumper says, look for the brighter spot and car tracks if you have to land there.

Ramy

An airplane can fly over someone is distress and drop flowers, a helicopter can actually stop and assist.

On Saturday, July 4, 2015 at 8:42:02 AM UTC-7, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
An airplane can fly over someone is distress and drop flowers, a helicopter can actually stop and assist.

Tell that to a Husky pilot!

Flying back home from OR one day with the wife, low over NV's Black Rock desert, I spotted what looked like a body on the playa.

(skip over many details here)

Bottom line, we landed, guy was still barely alive, and so we called an airliner overhead and asked for a relay to Reno approach and a helicopter ambulance.

Story actually made AOPA's eMag but little else.

Had we not been flying at a couple of hundred feet over the desert, we never would have spotted him as all he had on was khaki pants that blended in pretty well with the alkali lake bed.

Okay, we did get a helicopter to assist, so that part is valid I guess. But we "assisted" the guy with water and the shade of a Husky wing while we waited for almost an hour for the helicopter to arrive.

bumper

should be on the cover of soaring!

On a side note, the scout ship does in fact have a strong enough tractor beam, however they wanted to bring home an example of the best sailplane earthlings have and this one was a Js-1, not a Schempp-Hirth which explains why it was unable to make it back to the airport in the first place.

this:

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...1/848/cold.jpg