The lead story and photo in today's Peoria Journal Star was of a forced landing by Richard Mosier, a 73 year old, semi-retired dentist from Herington, Kansas.
After refueling at Macomb, Ill., he was heading northeast at 3,000 feet when the motor lost oil [?pressure]. He shut it off, picked a field, did a 360 to turn away from a small forest preserve he was approaching, and set it down Mosier had no injury. The picture shows no damage to the plane. And, amazingly, the reporting of the story was well done. Story below. -- Ed Burkhead Peoria, Ill. Ercoupe N3802H, 415-D See it at: http://pjstar.com/ In case tomorrow's stories replace this too soon, I hope they forgive me for letting you read it here. Please don't reproduce it in other venues without their permission. Forced landing doesn't faze veteran pilot When engine dies, 'You gotta think fast up there' 6/9/2000 By MICHAEL SMOTHERS of the Journal Star KICKAPOO - Richard Mosier ripped his pants climbing over a barbed wire fence Thursday and had to rent a car, or another plane if he was lucky. Other than that, the semiretired dentist from a small Kansas town wasn't about to let a forced landing of his single-engine aircraft in a cornfield just outside a home's back yard spoil his day. "I've been flying this plane so long, it's not a problem," Mosier said. "You gotta think fast up there," but after nearly six decades of flying, a forced landings with a dead engine "becomes old stuff. This isn't the first time." It was, though, for the 7-year-old girl who watched Mosier's 1946 Aircoupe glide silently from the noon sky to land just yards from her in the field behind her aunt's home off U.S. Route 150 five miles west of Kickapoo. "I yelled, 'There's a plane landing!'" Nicole Clevenger said as she recounted how she called her baby sitter and her 10-year-old cousin, Kyle Simmons, from the home at 14424 Fussner Road out to watch the finish of Mosier's bumpy but safe landing. "It scared me," Simmons said. Mosier, 73, said all such landings can be scary, but he seemed more embarrassed than anything else, until he was told his northeast course was about to take him over the hills and woods of Jubilee College State Park. "Nothing but trees?" he asked. "I told my wife this morning not to worry; I'd be flying over cornfields." Mosier of Herington, Kan., said he left there at 8 a.m. for South Bend, Ind., and his 50th class reunion at the University of Notre Dame. The plane he's owned since 1965 "and flown a lot before then" was in good shape, he said. "I just picked it up from the mechanic yesterday." But after refueling in Macomb, he was heading northeast at 3,000 feet when "the motor just suddenly lost oil. I turned it off, and it was still rattling like it was still running," he said. "I was over those trees," he said, pointing east. "I just did a 360 (degree turn) and came in." Mosier landed nose-up on his two wing wheels, took a deep breath and climbed out of the two-seat cockpit that had a crack in its canopy glass covered with duct tape. As the two children and their baby sitter watched, he caught his pants as he straddled over the fence into their yard, he said. It was all a set of minor inconveniences to the low-keyed dentist. "Hopefully I'll find someone to come out here and haul (the plane) away" when, courtesy of an Illinois State Police trooper, he got to Greater Peoria Regional Airport, he said. "I'll rent a car there or maybe a plane if I'm lucky," he said. Copyright © Peoria Journal Star, Peoria, Illinois U.S.A. __________________________________________________________________________ ______ To unsubscribe from this list please send mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
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