Folks, I posted this to my club's email list last week, and someone suggested I post it here as well.
A week ago today, I was out flying my Compulsion (I loved that plane! :-(). It was a good distance away, but still well within radio range. Clouds were coming in - still high in the sky, but they made a nice white background upon which to fly. I went into a turn, and the nice white wings of the Compulsion completely melded in with the background. Minor panic, but not bad, because I thought "No problem, I'll just keep the turn in until I see the black of the bottom of the wing." I never saw it. I tried maneuvering a bit so that I would see a flash of *anything* - no luck. I finally dropped my landing flaps and hoped for the best. I spent the rest of the afternoon searching for it. One thing I learned - a 3M plane is pretty big when it's nearby, but when it's potentially lost in a huge space, it suddenly seems awful tiny. I did have my name and address in the airplane, hopefully sometime as the season goes on, someone might give me a call and let me know they found it. This got me thinking - what kinds of recovery systems do you folks use in your airplanes (or, do you?)? If I had some sort of transmitter in it, perhaps I would have had a chance at recovering it. The ideal 'something' would be a 'thing' that would transmit its location. The receiver would plug into a GPS, or into a laptop with a GPS, and be able to say "Bing - your plane is here (give or take 3 meters)." Thanks in advance. - Dave P.S. (I've already said it) - I really loved that airplane. A 7037 Compulsion is an excellent aircraft.
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