AirBaker
Pattern Altitude
Heard about this briefly this morning. Found the news story below. Reports say the pilot had only had his license for the past month. With the way the weather was out here, sounds like a VFR pilot into some night IFR.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/5606180/detail.html
and from another news page:
GILROY, Calif. (AP) -- Rescuers searched a rugged hillside area of southern Santa Clara County on Thursday looking for survivors of a possible small plane crash.
Witnesses including an off-duty park ranger reported seeing a red flash and a single-engine plane going down on Wednesday night in an area southeast of Coyote Lake, officials said. One witness said the plane was doing acrobatics.
The Federal Aviation Administration received a distress call around 9 p.m. from a small-plane pilot who was encountering difficulty about 3.5 miles east of the South County Airport in San Martin, just north of Gilroy, said Curtis Darnell, a communications watch commander.
About three hours later, a Cessna 172 plane that had taken off from the airport earlier was reported missing on its return flight, the agency said. It was not known how many people were on board, or whether the distress call came from the missing plane.
On Thursday morning the agency said it had still not determined whether a plane had actually crashed. Rescue crews with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, the California Department of Forestry and park rangers had failed to locate the wreckage in the initial search. Rainy weather and rugged terrain made the search difficult, and limited visibility prevented rescue crews from determining exactly where the plane might have crashed, Darnell said.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/5606180/detail.html
and from another news page:
GILROY, Calif. (AP) -- Rescuers searched a rugged hillside area of southern Santa Clara County on Thursday looking for survivors of a possible small plane crash.
Witnesses including an off-duty park ranger reported seeing a red flash and a single-engine plane going down on Wednesday night in an area southeast of Coyote Lake, officials said. One witness said the plane was doing acrobatics.
The Federal Aviation Administration received a distress call around 9 p.m. from a small-plane pilot who was encountering difficulty about 3.5 miles east of the South County Airport in San Martin, just north of Gilroy, said Curtis Darnell, a communications watch commander.
About three hours later, a Cessna 172 plane that had taken off from the airport earlier was reported missing on its return flight, the agency said. It was not known how many people were on board, or whether the distress call came from the missing plane.
On Thursday morning the agency said it had still not determined whether a plane had actually crashed. Rescue crews with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, the California Department of Forestry and park rangers had failed to locate the wreckage in the initial search. Rainy weather and rugged terrain made the search difficult, and limited visibility prevented rescue crews from determining exactly where the plane might have crashed, Darnell said.
