Believe It or Not

For 2011, the "Believe it or Not" tale is the "Little Tug that flew away one day" and was found to fly another day!

TV Flyers had an interesting air mishap Oct 6, 2011.

John Bikle was flying his Tug that he uses to launch gliders as he usually does for club members. However on this particular day of glider flights, he lost telemetry between the radio and the receiver in the plane. John began to notice some unusual flight characteristics and ask Ken Turner who was nearby for assistance as they were able to release and launch the glider. John took control of the glider and Ken took control of the Tug.   

As Ken was reworking the problem, the Tug developed a runaway engine and began to climb. The plane had gone to full throttle with no way of backing it down. Ken flew it over the field until it ran out of gas hoping that he would ead stick it to land however to their surprise it continued to not respond to the radio inputs. What a tribute to John and his ability to have it fine tuned to fly right! It did several long sweeping circles over the field, continued to catch the usual wind currents that took the Tug further and further away with each circle toward Vail Lake.

Club members maintained a visual on the plane as it flew East over the mountains and finally lost sight of it. They had a final bearing on it as they lost it over the mountains. Our Club President Jerry Supler suggested to hike up on the adjacent mountain just East of our runway and have a look see. Jerry was familiar with the area, the mountain range, and confident that he could coordinate a search and recovery mission. He felt that the odds were in his favor that he would be able to see the Tug in the short brush. Jerry took his son Jett, two framed back packs, and binoculars on the hike. He had anticipated a rugged climb, multiple pieces to recover, and then return to the airfield. He had no doubt that for safety reasons, this was a two man job and he was right.


As they prepared to set out on their trek in the general direction and began to scope out the hills; he spotted what he thought was the Tug since it was the only thing that looked like it did not belong out there. He took pictures of it and the certain peak it was perched on! That is Vail Lake in the background.

Once he saw the Tug, Jerry didn't know what to expect but he was sure that the plane landed somewhat on its gear from what he observed earlier as he was only able to see the top of the wing earlier.

Jerry and Jett started out that morning with their gear and followed the route he had picked out. The initial climb was boulders strewn, vertical inclines to climb up, and they had no real problems  which were manageable. Once they got past the tough stuff the hike became easier as the kept sight the two hills that were distinct and easy to track towards. In the one photo over Jett's shoulder you can see the two little peaks, the one to the left is where the plane landed.

Jett went up first and Jerry wanted him to be the first to see it. Sure enough Jett shouts out "here it is." The plane amazingly had landed in a very small patch of cleared away dirt hitting nothing. As you can see in the pictures, the plane is as they found it. It did not hit anything and it lined itself up perfectly for a landing none of us could have done under radio control.

Had it been 1 foot lower it would have smashed nose first into the side of the hill where it landed. The other side of the hill was full of rocks and very steep. We took the plane apart and strapped the fuse and the wing to our back packs.

While at the recovery crash site, Jerry used his GPS to get the coordinates and was able to plug the coordinates into Google Earth and show the relationship of the crash site to the airfield. The coordinates are 33 29 46 22 N and 116 59 43 95 W.
  

Jerry and Jett packed the Tug and then climb back down and return to the airfield where they met up with John to pick up his plane. After inspection, the only damage was a few tears to the monocoat.

The Tug has been repaired and flying again.

We were all pretty amazed at how well this turned out as most of our runaways do not end up with a happy ending since our surrounding terrain are hills and ridgelines with  the field in the center in a valley.

We hope you enjoy this story. Happy flying.