Survival Pack

[Sapphire]

This thread should be renamed "Private Pilot Proclimations"

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Your blow up doll is the no. 1 survival item. Fill er up with water before you go and you will never go thursty.

 

In respect to my rather extensive, and well-equipped survival kit mentioned in earlier posts...

 

Two points I'd like to make from my personal perspective:...........

 

I once spent 3 hours laying beside a very wrecked Cessna 182, severly injuried, and looking at the prospect of spending a very cold, and scary night in open bush, with basically nothing but the wet shorts and T-shirt I was wearing. Although I had left the aircraft and walked about 100 mts, I was not capable of moving again after falling down, due to a severe back injury and internal injuries. I will never know if I, and another passenger would have been alive in the morning, but I think probabily not. Fortunatly we were spotted just before sunset by a searching aircraft, and instead we both spent a warm evening in an emergency ward. ( heavily in 'la la' land no doubt!)

 

I have also spent a lot of time in ultralights over very remote inland country, where it's a long way between drinks. You have a lot of time to just sit there looking down thinking, 'what if ??'...especially if it's the last hour or two before sunset, where you'd be pretty commited to overnight survival if you went down unexpectantly.

 

We have the greatest survival GPS beacon technology working for us now, and that will, and has already saved many flyers' lives. Am I a little paroinoid ??..you betcha, been there, done that !! If somebody is nice enough to be out there looking for me, I want to be sitting there as comfortable as possible, waiting for them to arrive !!...........Maj...

Maj,. . . .

 

Fortunately, I have never been stranded as a result of a downed aeroplane, but I HAVE spent nearly thirteen hours in the water after hitting a submerged shipping container, floating around 1 metre below the surface. . . . which severely compromised the hull bottom of a yacht I was part crewing in the Timor Sea. Me and my mate were picked up from the upturned hull by some blokes who turned out to be pirates, ( I think ? ) looking for whatever,. . . . but they didn't get much from us apart from our wristwatches ! They were actually quite nice I was SO GLAD to see them at the time, as I honestly thought we were goners. . . . .as all the survival gear was inside the upturned hull, they fed us both for 2 days, this was very interesting, as one of the crew members scrubbed part of the central deck of their boat for some hours, then the cook poured a big pot of food onto the deck and we all tucked into it using some sort of unleavened bread, around 2 feet long, unused bread was slung over your shoulder,. . . rather like Naan bread provided at the average curry house. . . this food, whilst it tasted delicious at the time. . . . caused some severe biological reaction in my gut, and I had to hang my bum over the side several times thereafter to remove the result. They then dropped us off ( in the water ) about a hundred metres off Dhili, East Timor, ( hope I spelt that correctly ) and then buggered off, . . the silly sods had left us in the sea in an outgoing tide, but we were picked up by the Indonesian ( Timorese ?) military and taken to shore.

 

Here endeth Phil's shipwreck story. . . . . I later found that, there had only been THREE yachts, ( trimarans actually . . . .) of the same design ever built, and that TWO of these had disappeared without trace some years earlier. . . . Pirates or submerged shipping containers ? I dunno. However, back to thread, . . . .If ALL your fancy survuval gear is stored where you can't get to it,. . . . it's academic.

 

ie, there was NO WAY I was going to dive under that boat, and try to find the flare pistol or radio in the dark, with bloody bull sharks swimming around me going "MMMM - Possible Fat Pom Dinner "

 

Phil

 

 

[Sapphire]

I was recently offered to crew on a couple of sail boats going east coast to Bali and Indonesia, but declined. I don't like the idea of creating employment opportunities for all the pirates lurking up there.

 

 

[Billzilla]

"What survival gear do you ALWAYS carry on every flight?"

 

Pen, passport, credit card. :)