On the way out along this ridge we did in fact find three large trees all together
with their tops taken out. One in particular had lost all it's bark and the remaining
surface had all turned to rotting pulp. This spoke to me of water being able to get
in behind the bark, stripping it off, and this as far as I know, could only happen
if the top is chopped off.... not a normal occurrence. We were not able to check
it out further on that occasion for various reasons - the main one being the weather
as forecast was turning against us, so I had no desire to linger!
On return home,
I reported back to the man with the device and so he made adjustments to it and sent
me another set of co-ordinates. In the meantime, I had overlaid my GPS tracks on
Google Earth and was able to determine roughly where I saw the chopped off trees.
On overlaying a colour aerial photo that was taken around 5 years after the disappearance,
I found what could only be described as 'man-made wreckage' not that far from where
I remembered the trees and the latest co-ordinates given to me were a little further
along from that in the same line.
The next trip in (two days travel each way to get
there), we searched the whole side of the hill, but still no joy - apart from getting
an accurate GPS position of the chopped off trees. On return home from this trip,
I placed these GPS'ed co-ordinates on Google Earth and found that the trees were
further around the other side of the apparent wreckage, which meant we had searched
in the wrong direction!!! Not only that, now that I had the correct direction, there
is what appears to me possible more wreckage over the ridge in that line. We shall
have to wait and see what develops on the next trip in, which hopefully won't be
long!
My conclusion on this device so far.... Needs more fine tuning as at this stage it appears that it is only giving a general area, but non-the-less, it has huge potential! When we actually find this plane, we will then have an actual target to tune it to (if I understand the device correctly?).
Anyway, the reason I am telling you this, is because the co-ordinates given to me for VH-MDX were also astounding:
Through all this real busy time, I thought I had updated this site with the corrections shown in the previous pages, and I actually started to write an email to the person with the device accusing him of 'cheating' by reading my article first and then placing his 'hit' in the area that I had marked in the update, but when I went online to find the relevant webpage to refer him to, I found that I had not published it!!!!!
There was no way that he could have known that I had now moved my area of projection
further north, yet he had marked his hit virtually on my designated track! This freaked
me out so much that I barely slept that night....
Over the last year or so, I have
kept in regular contact with Steven Oliver, who many of you may know as he runs the
Face Book page: Barrington Tops Snow Chasers and is involved with Face Book page:
The Search for VH - MDX and it was he that I had kept up to date with everything.
Judging
by the apparent margin of error with this device on the search I have been doing
here in the West Coast of the South Island, New Zealand, we set the possible area
as maybe about 200 meters, so last weekend (17-18 Sept 2016) Steven and three of
his mates ventured into the Barrington Tops and searched an area 250 meters x 250
meters around this spot but unfortunately found nothing.... So the venture continues...
MDX pg 31