Gavin Grimmer
At this stage at least, I’m not interested in carrying out any further searches as frankly I can’t afford it, and as it is just so far to go for me to get there. As there is no communication with the outside world, it’s also not fair on my wife who is back here in Hastings worrying whether she will ever hear from me again. In this day and age, there is satellite communication via sat-phones and the Internet although once again I can’t afford it. You need to realise that I have been consumed on these searches and research for 3 ½ years now, pretty much full time, so I have not had time to earn a living worth talking about. Hence, I’m now calling on some of you fellows that live much closer to the area, to take up the mantle and continue to search this area. I’ll give you all the help and assistance that I can give you from here at home, but all I ask is that you make sure you have a good GPS so that we can record all the areas searched to avoid doubling up and wastage of time.
Looking at all this objectively, the object that looks like an aeroplane on the aerial photo, could be just an illusion as the bush certainly has a habit of creating them, (although it sure is weird that it fits perfectly with what an eye witness saw) and this is borne out as quite possible as we have searched most of that defined area pretty thoroughly and found nothing. It needs to be remembered though, that there was an eyewitness report of an aeroplane lying in the top of the bush canopy somewhere in this area, 18 months after one went missing in the vicinity, and by a very reputable person.
As there has never ever been such a good a lead as this to ZK-BMP’s where-a-bouts, then it certainly needs paying a lot more attention to it. It may be further to the north, south, east or west.....who knows?
Please contact me if you can help out with further searches in this area, and I’ll see if I can get someone to co-ordinate it.
Whilst I was unsuccessful in this recent search, I was carrying in my aeroplane the same model GPS with the same database (bought off TradeMe) as was being relied upon to fly into Milford Sound by the pilot of Hughes 500 ZK-HNW, and via my experiences and familiarity of it on these flights, I now am pretty sure I now know why, and where this helicopter ended up.
If I’m correct, this will make this recent, difficult, trip very worthwhile.
Les standing beside my Maranda picketed at Martins Bay
Read on.....
Page 7 of 28
