Saturday morning a member of our flying club, Kenny, told me that he lost a plane in the woods West of our flying club field on Friday morning.  It is a model of a Kawasaki pre-WWII Japanese Army Biplane with about a 90 inch wing span and two-stroke gasoline engine.  He thought maybe the receiver battery went dead, he had just lost control.  The gas engine was still idling, the plane was just kind of mushing down in a slight nose up attitude, and slowly went down below the treeline which starts about 150 to 200 yards West of our North-South runway.

Kenny told me that he spent several hours looking for it Friday afternoon, to no avail.  He was going to look for it Saturday as well, but I had to leave the field and head home with things I had to do, so I couldn't stay and help.  I did offer to help early Sunday (today), and would bring my quad with camera to help with the search.  He did not call me Saturday evening, so I knew he had not found it.

So this morning I went out early, and put the bird up right around sunrise.  No one else was around, so I just sent it out about 600 hundred to 1000 feet to the general area he had pointed out Saturday.  I got my bearings between a couple of lakes and I-95, and using Course Lock I started making East-West passes making my way to the North.  I made a few passes, but figured I would bring it in before using too much battery, and wait for Kenny to show up.

The cloudy sky made for pretty good ability to see my smartphone, but it's still a small screen.  I had grabbed my laptop this morning to take with me, so I figured I'd take a look on the larger screen at the video I'd shot.

Well a minute or so into the flight I saw in the video something that "could" be a plane, which is the first picture, which is a screen shot from the video. About that time Kenny showed up, and he was really excited and sure that the object was his plane.

So we sent the bird back out, using a bend in the lake shore and a sandy area on the ground for reference.  Lo and behold, there it was, you can see it in the picture taken by the Vision + camera.  It's resting in the top of a tree.

We walked out through woods and found it nestled perfectly 15 to 20 feet up in a pine tree like someone had gently laid it in there.  It was difficult to see and find from the ground, even though we knew right where it was.  Kenny even pointed out brush nearby he had cut with his machete.   He had walked within 30 or 40 feet of the tree several times.  But this is Florida, and the woods grow thick.

Needing to leave for church, I left a thankful Kenny there planning the retrieval, which I'm sure has occured by now.

I had often thought my Phantom might useful for finding a lost plane, and now it has.  Cool!

Now that is freakin awesome!
Glad you saved a rare species!

Wow! Very, very cool!

He certainly owes you a beer or three!

Jamie,

That was really neat! Great story and I bet that plane wasn't cheap either. Kenny must be very grateful!

Jerry

Jamie that's pretty cool. How often do planes fly off? I have been thinking about attaching my Trackimo to the S15e.

Way to go!  That is excellent.  Glad you found the plane.  Hope your friend did not fall out of the tree recovering it.

I wonder if he would have ever found it.

That's awesome! I imagine he was very great full for that!

Knowing people who have lost RC airplanes that is great.

Well done!!

A great positive story!!

Yug