Pilot Trapped For Three Hours

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31501, 16 October 1967, Page 14

Pilot Trapped For Three Hours

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, October 15 A glider pilot was trapped in his aircraft for three hours this afternoon when he crashed in dense scrub in the Tararu Valley, two miles north of Thames.

The pilot, Mr I. H. Finlayson, a farmer of Frankton, was able to radio a Mayday distress signal after he had crashed. Suffering from a fractured hip, he was reached by police and the Thames Search and Rescue Organisation at 5.30 p.m. The rescue party took five hours to get him to Thames. Call Heard Mr Finlayson’s Mayday call was picked up by a fellow member of the Piako Gliding Club, Mr B. Kosoos, who was gliding over the club’s field

at Matamata. He relayed the message immediately to club members on the ground who notified the Matamata police. The police at Thames were also told as the pilot had given his position as somewhere north of the town. A request for help was made to members of the Hauraki Aero Club and the Thames Search and Rescue Organisation was alerted. Wreck Sighted Three aircraft from the aero club circled the Thames area for an hour before Mr O. A. Whiting saw from his Cessna a blue object in the bush in the valley above the North Thames School. With the position fixed, a

rescue team of 12 men went into the valley and reached the crashed aircraft which was 600 feet high in the hills. But the journey out with the stretcher was hampered by the density of the scrub and at 10 p.m. several had to return to Thames for slashers to clear a path.