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Old 10th November 2025 | 11:54
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Pilot DAR
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Joined: Aug 2006
: CPL
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From: Ontario, Canada
I have just force landed

Scenario - broken leg - no phone - coat? rain? snow? Late afternoon to dark

No shelter from the aircraft - and all your tech is in cockpit - dead
There's good advice!

On my long trips into the wilderness in my amphibian, I would wear an inflatable lifejacket with a lot of pockets. Everything I would need for an overnight stay on shore was in those pockets. During all of those trips (including one which took me camping 93 miles from the nearest other person) I never needed any of it. But I had learned from friend's events that being prepared independent of any tech [in the plane] was wise. What you have on your person when you exit the wreck is all you have. Toward this end, I always carried my cell phone in a water proof bag, clipped to my lifejacket. It would stay protected until I needed it. (sat phone for very distant trips).

It was a good concept, though had a flaw: When I was ejected through the windshield into the lake, the life jacket was torn, and the phone bag sank. My wife told me that she phoned it for three days, until it stopped ringing, so the waterproof bag worked. Fortunately, the crash of my student and I was just near the dock, so were were rescued promptly.

All of this to say, that I think about occupant safety and serviceability first and foremost while flying. I do not bury myself in minutia about tech and flight planning/navigation and record keeping. When you're flying safely, and there is a minor information gap, filling that gap is pretty easy these days. Here, you're posting to a group, many of whom (including me) learned to fly in an airplane which did not have an electrical system. The chart was folded to show the route to be flown on the outside, and stuffed inside your shirt so the airflow did not catch it (I lost a few). And, we made it! Sure, airspace is a little more complex in some places these days, but some flights can be very simple, think about how to keep them that way!
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