A case of quick & correct thinking

My Dad loved skiing in the Swiss Alps and used to go for weekends to St Moritz. When the weather was good he used to fly in G-AWOE to Samedan, an aerodrome very close to St Moritz. Samedan is deep within a valley closely surrounded by high mountains and there is space for only a tight circuit.

Unfortunately the weather was often bad and the train journey he had to take rather than fly took up too much valuable skiing time. So to fix it, he installed a radar in G-AWOE together with a camera mounted to take photos of the radar screen. He took many, many photos of the radar shapes of the mountains around St Moritz to the point where he could safely recognise the the Samedan valley from above clouds and safely descend through cloud to commence his landing pattern. I always just a bit worried by this as the fault free life of the radar was only 300 hours. But he was happy.

Unfortunately, he could not cover the whole of the Swiss Alps, Anyway, one day, returning from a skiing trip and flying over 10/10th cloud, he lost an engine. I think the carburettor heating had failed. He was high and couldn’t maintain that height on one engine. So he was forced to descend through cloud into a valley he didn’t know.

Nasty, Swiss alpine valleys have only one exit and there are only two directions to fly in these valleys, say North or South. If he chose wrong, opposite to the valley exit, he would be squeezed by the rising floor and narrowing sides of the valley and, since he couldn’t climb or by that time turn round, there could be only one ending on a mountain side.

He spotted a small river or stream in the bottom of the valley and noticed a weir. The turbulent water flow downside of the weir was the solution and gave him the correct direction to fly to escape from the valley.

Great perception and a cool head, I think.

My great thanks to all who have so generously offered their condolences
Mike