In the spirit of the short film North Atlantic, we bring you a real-life aviation radio drama … 13 years to the day after it happened.
If you had been listening to 5.598 MHz on an HF radio at 11:30 Z on May 17, 2000, this is what you would have heard.
It’s a riveting recording that’s worth listening to until the very end. We got it from the pilot involved, and we’ll be interviewing him soon to bring you the complete story.
Note: The periodic time stamp transmissions were added to the recording by air traffic control.
Audio
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[audio: eight_minutes.mp3]Right-click to download the MP3 file (31 minutes – 14.3 MB)
Did you like this recording? Please leave your comments and questions below.
Photo by aaron_anderer licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.
WOW! Longest 31 minutes I can recall. Will look forward to the interview. And hopefully more info on geographic area in which this took place and who were the responders.
love this stuff, Thanks!
Great clip with a happy ending. Will look forward to the interview with the pilot. These folks are true professionals dealing with the high noise level of HF radio.
Gets your heart pumping , and is a wake up call for those who don’t know how to find and understand grid coordinates . Thanks for sharing that with us.
Thank you for sharing. Sobering stuff.
Great to know some good people were
monitoring the HF.
Excellent! The pilot communicating those
waypoints and getting others on board to
co-ordinate a rescue.
Hi Oddball Pilot, thanks for all the news. Fly safe and keep up the good work.
Regards.
Albertus.
Gordens Bay South Africa.
If only we’d been there with our Catalina “Miss Pickup” :0)
Riveting and instructive: Mayday gets immediate attention and response to save the pilot of a ditched C172.
It got my pulse rate up.
Great coverage and enjoyed the whole thing.
What a wonderful job these guys do! Thanks for posting