This Site is dedicated to all those families of the people that have tragically disappeared on flights in and around New Zealand. I only hope that from all the effort in building this site and from all the effort of those taking part in this venture, that it will bear fruit in bringing ‘closure’ to their memories!
Gavin Grimmer
You’ll note that this track over flies three valleys and so hence we can take it
that what these observers heard was the resulting echoing from these three valleys
traveling down to their position. It would sound like the motor was stopping and
starting as it crossed each valley!
This of course means that when they heard it ‘stop’ for the final time, does not
mean that was the position where the motor went quiet due to fuel starvation.
If Ryan did set course for West Melton from about overhead Harper River, then allowing
for room for error of what position he was in that valley, I have placed a pink shaded
overlay shown
in the next GE image of the area he would have likely flown over:
If we go back to the last calculation (page 15) from Ross to Glenthorne Station:
100 knots = 20 mins + time from Ross = 37 mins = 3 to 23 mins fuel remaining
110 knots = 18 mins 35 5 to 25
120 knots = 16 mins 32 8 to 28 <
130 knots = 15 mins 30 10 to 30
With the distance to Glenthorne swapped over onto the course shown in the above image,
this gives approximately another 12 miles to run (6 mins) to be at the back of Mt
Torlesse, - where the smoke was seen!
As previously mentioned, as we don’t know exactly how many times he circled in the
Ross area as per one report, another in the Upper Kokatahi area, and whether four
orbits in the northern Lake Kaniere was enough for him to climb to possibly 8 to
10,000 ft to enable going over the top, then these fuel remaining times as in the
above calculation could be less. To give you an idea of how much extra time he could
have used from his fuel reserves, an average circuit at a rate one turn takes two
minutes to complete, so for any extra circuits would have used an extra 2 mins from
the above figures - and a little extra if he was on full power climbing.