AR pilot's crash found in OK- Different one than Madison Co find

[Jaison009]

http://www.katv.com/story/23779742/oklahoma-authorities-searching-for-missing-heber-springs-pilot
http://5newsonline.com/2013/10/22/heber-springs-mans-airplane-reported-missing-after-takeoff/

Civil Air Patrol was involved in this one also. This one happened the same time frame as the one in Madison County, Arkansas.

[cap235629]

In the past 7 days Arkansas Wing members were involved in 5 separate aviation incidents. 3 ELT activations (all finds) 1 downed aircraft (find) and the Wing CV who is also a pilot for the State Highway Department assisted the FAA in locating and vectoring an aircraft that was having engine trouble to a suitable off airport landing site.

The Fort Smith Composite Squadron was also put on standby to assist in the OK search as we are in fact the closest CAP unit to the search area (30 miles away).

Been a BUSY week.........

[Jaison009]

Proud of you guys for representing AR so well.

In the past 7 days Arkansas Wing members were involved in 5 separate aviation incidents. 3 ELT activations (all finds) 1 downed aircraft (find) and the Wing CV who is also a pilot for the State Highway Department assisted the FAA in locating and vectoring an aircraft that was having engine trouble to a suitable off airport landing site.

The Fort Smith Composite Squadron was also put on standby to assist in the OK search as we are in fact the closest CAP unit to the search area (30 miles away).

Been a BUSY week.........

[RickRutledge]

The Laflore County search was an interesting one. I arrived at the staging area/IC shack in Big Cedar, Oklahoma at 0800 yesterday with the intent on simply being an on-site liason between us and them. At that point, the Highway Patrol and local SAR/CERT teams had been searching for 2 days. Intel in the overnight hours indicated a possible sighting east by 15 miles than the area they had planned to search yesterday. I found out that no ground based ELT search had been done and there was "no luck" in finding the signal from the air. We scrambled air crews with the intent on having them search a 40+ mile swath of land between the two major mountains in the area at a different altitude and direction as the OHP fixed wing guys. That was going to take an hour or two before they were in the grid, so I decided to do something productive and take out the L-Per and try to start in the center of the day's target and see what we could get. After 3 separate readings, we had no signal. Just by chance we went another 200 yards East of the last reading and viola, signal. Sensitivity on high in Receive mode only. We made a parallel track and had the OHP plane and our aircrews fly up and down that ridge line plus or minus 3 miles from the nearest coordinates of the first reading. And they began to receive a super strong reading. We narrowed the search area to a 2 mile by 2 mile grid...we found the aircraft on top of the mountain in a creek bed under thick foliage.

The hard part was that the pilot's family was at the IC post all day. I don't know if they were there while we were reporting the information as we narrowed, but I hope they found closure. The look on their faces that morning was one of hope being lost...

The positive side of this was that the search area of the day was almost 20 miles north and slightly east of where we located the site. Had CAP not taken the readings, the search would still be on.

As a side note: The wing had silenced an ELT the night before, participated in a search for a different plane the week/weekend prior and we silenced another ELT last night at 2300. It's been a long week. Three finds in 24 hours and operations constant for 48. Insane.