Thanks Colin. Good to see something from you. Ken Rand had had many narrow escapes with his planes and was counting on yet another one, but this time his luck had run out. LA was having one of the most unusual winter storms on record when he came in non-stop from Texas, just about out of fuel. He flew high, above or between the storm clouds and was counting on finding a "hole" to drop down into the LA basin and find his way to Meadowlark, a now re-developed (disappeared) airport in Orange County. I believe that was his home airport, the one closest to he and Jeanette's office. He'd flown over a thousand miles and was running on fumes. Not finding any holes, he turned north, out to the desert. The mountains to the north and east of LA tend to contain and collect the worst of the frontal storms and that day there were no holes. He turned north to get over the mountains into the desert . . . probably planning on getting to Victorville (home of Revmaster, btw), was a reasonable decision. But . . . he was out of fuel by this time and was forced to drop into the extremely cold and wet clouds. He transmitted that his controls had iced up, thus explaining why he was not able to set it down in the flat, desert area where he crashed, just north of Phelan. It was an open desert area about halfway between Phelan and Victorville. Without iced-up controls, he could have easily set it down in the relatively flat terrain.
I agree that the KR will carry ice . . . I've had both clear and rime ice on the wings and it flew fine but the problem comes when controls get frozen and the canopy becomes opaque. From descriptions I've read, Ken was basically a ball of ice after going through several thousand feet of the wettest, coldest clouds seldom seen in Southern California. I've read a much more detailed description of his crash sometime in the past, but don't have it handy. It may be in the KRNET archives. Mike Stirewalt KSEE -- KRnet mailing list KRnet@list.krnet.org https://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet
