Drove past the site yesterday en route to Alice Springs.

Word from the locals was that he had almost set down when a car appeared head on and he pulled up and into the wire.

Its a single strand, literally the only obstruction over the highway for a couple of hundred kilometres in each direction. Poor buggers.

They were probably less than 5 miles from the Elliott air strip.

Onetrack,have a look at the front page of the Sunday Territorian,(nt news.com.au)They sure look like power poles to me!The town of Ellior suffered a power outage as a direct reult of the accident

Given the amount of irresponsible stupid stuff I've seen people get away with in the territory that is terribly unlucky.:{

Mantraps??
 

Yet more aviators die as a result of collisions with power lines. Does no-one care?

Ah what are you suggesting bushy, that they should all be removed in case aircraft require that area to set down in after an engine failure?
The Comet.

Was a pain in the ear having to listen to them block the west Kimberly CTAF with their German chatter as well. went on for well over an hour, and they didn't care about anyone trying to make radio call, they just chattered over the top of them. :ugh:

comet
 

There are many deaths every year when aircraft collide with power lines. Most of the power companies have been government run, and have been unco-operative. It is not difficult to make power lines more visible, but they don't seem to care.
One day it may happen to someone near you.

Bushy, get off the grass! To make power lines more visuable the only way I know of is to put coloured balls on them and do you have any idea how much that would cost? Even at $10 ea there are millions of km's of wires in this country. Not to mention the wind loading of the cables and insulation degrading they would cause for major trunk main at 100,000 odd volts especially when wet.
It is one thing to put a few up around airports quite another to try and put them everywhere.
I am only guessing here but going on what I have read elsewhere I believe it is fairly normal even encouraged in europe to head for a road ( not freeway) if you should have an engine failure. Having been there I must say power lines over there tend not to follow country roads so much but rather cut across paddocks, country roads tend to be quiet traffic wise, sealed unlike ours, and there paddocks are smaller than here and often surrounded by stone walls/fences.( not the best landing places).
Over here it is the opposite and few if any instructors would tell there students to head towards a road.
This I am guessing is where they unfortunately came undone.

mostlytossas

A number of years ago, it was the practice to put balls on the few lines crossing the Stuart Highway. The practice was dropped due to cost cutting.

Its not uncommon for outback roads to be turned into temporary runways for medivacs. You will be aware there are sections actually designated as emergency RFDS strips, some including piano keys at each end.

I have to stand corrected on my earlier statement that they hit the only line within a few hundred kilometres.

There's also a triple line crossing the highway a few kilometres to the north. Talking to a sparky who's worked on them, they're the only two lines across the highway in a 700km stretch. Not too expensive to have strung a few balls.

And exactly how many occurred in Australia last year?

We been hanging these buggers on powerlines fer years in the Top End


http://www.nt.gov.au/powerwater/imag...sheets/bat.jpg

OK my apologies I took Bushy to mean ALL cables near roads like the ones that run parallel with country roads ( for ease of access ) for hundreds of km's. It sounds that they were extremely unlucky to hit the one odd cable that crossed the highway. Surprises me that a single cable as reported didn't break at the insulator or snap. What guage are they around there?
Incidentally I am a sparky also hence my interest in how it could happen.
As PF said above does not happen very often the last I can remember was Maslin's chopper flying into heavy cables across a valley at Burinjuck NSW at least 15yrs ago.

Mate

Extremely unlucky is an understatement.

No comment on the cause of him wanting to land on the highway but if he could have gotten a couple more minutes out of it, he could have made the Elliott strip.

Or if the car hadn't happened along when it did, he would have run under the wire.

I wondered that the wire was still strung up. He certainly damaged the system enough to knock out power along the line.

My layman's guess was that he just snagged a wheel as he pulled up at low speed and it effectively tripped him in nose first.

I saw a Thorpe 18 take out powerlines back in 1977 but only one of the three lines actually came down.

As far as luck goes, its in the same category as the two guys standing on a bridge in the middle of nowhere Kakadu a few years back. A landcruiser with trailer drove by and, just as it got to them, the trailer broke its coupling and took them both out.

very interesting read indeed...

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/...058_prelim.pdf

Hmmmm? Have a look at these reports I came across??:rolleyes:

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Pilot of fatal plane crash was sightseeing: report

Posted 3 hours 25 minutes ago
A report into a plane crash that killed three German tourists on the Stuart Highway near Elliott in the Northern Territory last month has revealed the pilot was flying low on a sightseeing exercise.

The preliminary Transport Safety Bureau Report says the tail of the plane struck powerlines on the Stuart Highway, causing it to nosedive into the ground then flip onto its roof.

During radio conversations the pilot of the plane said he was descending to get a better look at the Highway.

A witness in a car says the plane flew over them at tree top level before crashing.

The report says conditions on the day were fine and there was nothing wrong with the plane, although it was overloaded.
A photo taken from the plane a week before the crash showed it flying over a Western Australian beach at 20 metres!!!:ugh:

pp

GOANA world-class
 

My wife & I (Americans) thouroughly enjoyed our GOANA trip around NSW in early 2000. We intended to do a Queensland tour; but before we could return, the regs put them out of business.
They ran a world-class operation from my perspective as a customer. I have never flown a C172 that performed like the one I flew for 10 days downunder! I can believe 40,000 injury-free flying hours. We had one lady who was stung by a scorpion at Broken Hill. Curlyw has it right -- the people as well as the equipment were tops. What a way to see Australia!!!
Curlyw is right about Africa too. One of the parties that flew with us in 2000 did an air safari in Africa, and we're looking into it.