| P-MAN X Update #31
- Keeping the tradition alive Greetings from Houston, on the way back to Pittsburgh. In keeping with a long-standing tradition, we waited until mid-afternoon the last day of the trip (yesterday: Saturday) to make one final big find, and had a cool adventure along the way.On Friday, we dropped by Matt Harris's new place of business, Palau Helicopters. We asked him to keep an eye open during his tourist hops in several areas where the low-level aerial view might reveal stuff that we can't see from the water. He also told us about some things he's spotted since we last talked. Then he had a great idea: he needed to fly the helicopter from Malakal (where it's generally parked on the roof of a hotel) up to the airport in Airai to pick up a load of fuel, and he invited Pat, Laura and me to come along! Cool! Later in the afternoon, just as we were about to head out the door to meet Matt, we got a call from his wife Madrei, saying that he'd had to take off on a search-and-rescue mission, to find a missing small boat that had not showed up when expected up in Cuyangel. A bit later we heard that Matt had found the boat, and everybody was okay. So mid-afternoon Saturday, just as we were about to finish packing, we got another call. Matt was heading up to the airport for gas again, and would we like to come along? Jumped in the car and made the two-minute drive down the road. We climbed the stairs up to the roof, Laura barely able to conceal her excitement (and with Pat and me equally but perhaps less obviously excited).
The little Hughes 500 has two nice seats up front with great visibility, and two in the back in which your head leans against the engine cover and you have to sit hunched over as if you're strapped into a packing case with one side missing. Visibility in the back seats is good to the side, since there's no door. If your seat belt snaps, you're a goner. But since I've got a thousand hours or so flying a J-3 with the door open, I felt right at home. Matt flew us low over Max's conservation-area site, where we saw absolutely nothing. Maybe Max's wing is really buried in the sand.
He also showed us some things in Airai that we'll be adding to next year's list: a long rectangular object in shallow water,
a good look at the area in the Airai Channel that Vince told us about,
an apparent Japanese plane that looks like it was pushed backwards off the runway and that lies on a steep slope immediately north of the east end of the runway,
and the biggie: a piece of empennage near the power plant, just up the hill from the FM-2 Wildcat site by the airport.
Some photo analysis that I just did between Guam and Honolulu makes it clear (to me) that this is a horizontal stabilizer and elevator from an FM-2, and probability-wise, it almost has to be part of the Wildcat to which JPAC may be devoting a mission within the next couple of years - since it's the only Wildcat that we know of that was shot down anywhere near here. The importance of this find, if my guess is confirmed, is that this extends the known debris field for the Wildcat site. See what you think:
And finally, here's a happy Matt and Madrei with their new BentProp bandanas:
I started writing this in Houston; now I'm back home in Pittsburgh. Starting to plan for next year's trip, which is only 11 months away... - Reid |
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