Gavin Grimmer
To cut a long story short, (you can read about it in more detail in my book) I eventually had to walk out to the coast which was miles away and I was ‘rescued’ the next day by the helicopter!
This site is another one that I feel could be easily sorted out with a Magnetometer or mini-SAR so it is my intention to revisit this site also.
Many, many thanks to James Scott, (the helicopter owner), Ken Hutchins (the pilot), Jeremy Arthur, and Blair Patterson - all of Alpine Adventures, who helped me out tremendously and made the visits to these sites possible!
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Month’s later, I discovered a new way of positioning aerial photos as overlays on Google Earth, and when I applied this system to this 1980 Lake McKerrow aerial photo, I discovered that I had positioned it wrong. The object was not on the edge of the plateau as I originally thought, but further up more towards the middle of it.
I contacted the person that saw it in September 1980 and he confirmed that his memory was that it was more towards the middle.
According to the GPS tracks of where I had searched, I had walked to within about 100 feet of it!
There is another party of people who have attempted to get into this area to do another ground search (with advice and blessings from me) but were beaten by the weather. They intend having another go in the near future and I wish them every success.
If they are unfortunate and get beaten back by the weather again, then a friend and I intend having another attempt, and are presently gearing up for that purpose at the present time (Jan 2011).
If any members of the families involved in this mystery happen to read this, I hope you will not get your hopes up as it is still a very difficult task finding anything in the New Zealand bush, but I certainly hope that you can take comfort in knowing that people are still looking!
On the next page, you will see the 3D images of the photo that I have, overlayed on Google Earth showing a Cessna 180 upside down with a broken starboard (right-hand) wing.
READ ON......
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