I broke my own rules, ventured out too low over the forrest at my daughters school, the wind became variable and gusting, got below the tree line, lost the plane and camera (and gyro, dammit). Recovery not likely. Live and learn I guess. I will adhear more to my own rules in the future. I'm also going to look into a locator for someday when I'm not broke.

On day one I went out twice to look without any luck. I'm figuring that even if I locate it, it could be at the top of a 100 foot tree. Here is a sat picture of what I was attempting. The green dot is where I was. I wanted to get waaay up and catch my house, the blue circle, from about 2/3-3/4 of the way there. The superimposed picture shows the forest line captured from a previous flight. It should be fairly good evidence that I had a reason to believe I could be successful. Anyhow, somewhere near the orange X, or maybe beyond, is where the plane got caught by stronger winds and started to sink. I freaked out and tried to circle it and gain altitude but it kept slowly loosing feet until it suddenly dipped below the tree line. At that point I didn't know what to do so I tried WOT and a bit of extra elevator. I saw it once more through a break in the trees and that was it, except it was still flying at the time and fighting the wind. It was also a pretty decent glider so I really don't know how far it might have gone or in which direction.

Not only is the forest a mix of small, medium and 100+ foot trees, but the terrain also drops a good 100+ feet in the clearer area. Of course that sat picture is from the 90's so the clear area isn't so clear anymore. Those areas are also covered in leaf bearing trees so the shot could have been from the spring or late fall making the tall trees invisable from the air. In the conifer areas, some times you look up and all you see is tree. There are quite a few spots where the plane could be at the top of a tree and be non-visable.

I went back in with my video camera so I can show the real 1'st person view and keep myself honest about the scale of everything. I was also hoping to get lucky, but that didn't happen.

I have walked the distance between my house and the parking lot, but there is so much width, height and lack of visability that I don't see how I could find it without being masively lucky.

Again, for the record, I have spec'ed out this plane before and it had a full size (1 mile range) RX so I really wasn't expecting to drop altitude and get lost -- I really thought I could get something good.

In this picture, the top left corner was my view from the parking lot. The last time I saw the plane was through the hole in the trees in the center of the shot. At one point I had the plane about 1/2 way from the tops of the trees to the top of the picture from this viewpoint, but of course I don't know the depth. The wind was also pushing it into a spiral so I have no idea what direction it was in at the end.

The top right shot is a big tree shot. Those giants are everywhere and if I found the plane I expected it to be at the top of one. I didn't even get that lucky.

The bottom left shows the tree density close up from the inside.

The bottom right shows an area with bare trees that still make things difficult because of their numbers.

The terrain is definately uneven. There are several different areas that drop lower than those trees are tall. There are streams, thick foliage, fallen trees, wet leaves, leftover ice patches and pricker bushes. This is all standard Vermont forest stuff, but I am sure it would be weird to a flatlander. You just can't walk back and forth looking at everything there is to see. It is a great place for a stroll though--very soothing. I think that might have kept me from stressing over why I was there.

I guess that is about it for the search. I have done my best and I know it isn't good enough. I'll just have to do better next time at making my aerial recon plane locatable.