Unexpected events

[n5lp]

I was on a typical mission today. The plan was for photography at a newly found WWII crash site in the Guadalupe Mountains then over to check on the "Secret Salt Flat Airport." This is pretty desolate country and I never see anyone out here.

Earlier I had not been able to spot the newly found wreckage but today it was obvious, so I orbited a couple of times while taking photos. That will be a hike in the near future to try to find out the aircraft type (maybe an AT-11 from the Carlsbad Army Base).

After this I set up a course for the secret airfield which took me right along the Guadalupe Mountains escarpment at 7,500 feet (below 3,000 AGL). So I'm cruising along fat dumb and happy, enjoying the scenery when I spot traffic at 12 o'clock high. WHAT? It is a weight shift aircraft, up above me by at least 500 feet in the middle of nowhere. I had already capped the camera or I could have taken a good photo as I passed underneath.

To understand some of my amazement be aware that I know of the problems of flying a J-3 or similar aircraft between Carlsbad and El Paso, it is just too far. I was thinking where could it be out of? Maybe a local ranch, I thought.

I continued the 40 nautical miles to the "secret airport" took my photos then headed back to the home base of Carlsbad. As I was approaching I heard the radio calls of not one, but three aircraft approaching for landing. We landed at about the same time.

These were not ultralights, but were small, open, weight shift aircraft and I had to go talk to them. They were on a tour out of Albuquerque down to Cielo Dorado near Santa Teresa then to Carlsbad then back to Albuquerque via a fly-in at Dexter, NM. They had ground crew. When I flew past they were flying at between 8,000 and 9,500 MSL.

We talked about who had seen whom. There was mention of MCAS? I said TCAS, and they said no, MCAS. Not as good but still good for collision avoidance. I just googled and still don't know about MCAS. Anyway these small aircraft seemed to be better equipped than my old RV and they seemed to be having plenty of fun.

[mburch]

Looks like there is a Zaon PCAS MRX sitting on top of the yellow trike's panel... I bet that's what they meant by "MCAS".

So tell us Larry, where can we see pictures of the old crash site and find out what is happening at Salt Flat?

mcb

[bhassel]

Well he hasn't posted the new ones on his web site yet. If you haven't seen the old ones about hte mystry airport - they're on his web site at http://n5lp.net/.

Bob

[n5lp]

Originally Posted by mburch

Looks like there is a Zaon PCAS MRX sitting on top of the yellow trike's panel... I bet that's what they meant by "MCAS".

Oh they probably said PCAS. I just wasn't familiar with the term and likely misremembered what they said.

Originally Posted by mburch

So tell us Larry, where can we see pictures of the old crash site and find out what is happening at Salt Flat?

mcb

Well I didn't put them up because they aren't really pretty photographs and likely aren't of interest to many people but me and a few other locals, but since I like the GPS you made for me, here you go.

I have a friend who has a hobby of keeping track of the many aircraft crash sites in and around the Guadalupe Mountains. I am also in a hiking group that walks to some of these sites just for the fun of it, kind of like geocaching I guess, but a little more real life.

The National Parks normally have a very good inventory of what is within their borders. The crash above was happened upon by an owl researcher within Carlsbad Caverns National Park. That made it particularly interesting because they didn't know about it and it isn't in the normal crash databases. I went up a couple of weeks ago with an observer just to see if I could spot it. I didn't really expect to be able to. From experience I know that crash sites are hard to see unless it was a very big airplane. I know a B-29 crash site that can be spotted from miles away. The observer couldn't see this wreckage a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't see it at that time either.

Also from experience I know that slightly different sun angles and different lighting can make all the difference in what you can see. Yesterday the light was flat and I could immediately and obviously see the wreckage pieces. From the photo above I wouldn't necessarily believe that those were wreckage pieces, but those pieces and more were obvious to the naked eye. Some of the wreckage pieces look a lot like the rocks but are near the center between the rows of bedding plane rocks.

This site is about 25 miles from Carlsbad. We will have to drive about 70 miles then walk several miles. The last 8 or so miles of the drive will be on extremely poor roads where high clearance vehicles will probably average about 2 miles per hour and will drive until the road doesn't allow it any more. It should be a good long day to get to that place and back home.



As Bob says, there are a lot more details about this place on my website, but here it is yesterday. There were people present on the site, which is not normal for the weekends unless they are doing their parachute jumping operations.

Note the control tower at left. The building on the right is new in the past few weeks. Also new is the shed structure with all the vehicles under it, attached to the original building. Note all the matched vehicles under the shed. I haven't seen anything like that before.

When they are having an "operation" they put picnic tables between some of those trailers and put up a tarp shade.

Always something new going on there! Because of previous unwanted FAA attention I just made one discrete pass at 700 feet yesterday.



Here are some more wreckage photos:


Guadalupe Mountains National Park just off the Guadalupe Peak Trail




B-17 near Pine Springs Campground, Guadalupe Mountains National Park






B-29 south of Guadalupe Pass


B-29 Wing in bottom of canyon

Yep, this is a sobering hobby. A few weeks ago we visited the wreckage of a light airplane that had gone into the vertical face of El Capitan.

[mburch]

Thanks Larry. I'm always curious about the Salt Flat thing so whenever you post new photos I always make time to check them out.

cheers,
mcb