You’ll note that with this cut-out added you can see what appears to be the back
door window, and at this point of time I was getting really excited as it seemed
that I actually had a photo that contained the image of the long lost Hughes 500
ZK-HNW!
The problem then was to work out where exactly I had taken the photo and after many
hours using the video footage to calculate my ground speed between landmarks that
were visible on the footage and Google Earth, using the recorded time to the second
recorded on my SLR camera of each photo, and then applying all this information to
my GPS tracks, I was able to come up with pretty good GPS co-ordinates.
The evidence seemed to be stacking up for it to be ZK-HNW as this position was only
about ½ a mile away from, what I thought at the time was his last reported position
and within 500 ft of his track.
I contacted James Scott from “Alpine Adventures” again (Link to his web site on the
“LINKS” page) and also his pilot that flies a Hughes 500 in the area north of Milford,
and sent them the GPS co-ordinates and an A4 sized photo, as shown of the area on
the top of the last page, and they said they would check it out as soon as they got
the time and when the weather was suitable.
From about that day onwards, it just rained and rained in that area, for about a
month!
Eventually the weather cleared and they were able to get into the spot.
I was pleased that Ken Hutchins said that my co-ordinates were fairly close.
I had asked Jeremy ( the other person in the helicopter) to make sure he took a camera
with him, so that I could examine his photos on my computer to satisfy myself that:
1/ They really had found the correct spot.
2/ In the event that it wasn’t there, then I could see for myself.
3/ If it wasn’t there, I hopefully might be able to work out what the object was,
eliminate the spot, and then move on.
4/ If they couldn’t find it, then I’d always wonder, and not really be able to
concentrate on looking elsewhere - so it was finality for me.
5/ If it was there, then I wanted to see it for myself.
