On Saturday, I was flying my Zephyr at New York's "Floyd Bennett Field" -- an old airbase surrounded by mostly forrest/swamp. I was about 350 meters out when my video went completely static from one moment to the next. I tried to climb, tried to engage RTH, nothing worked. I lost my Zephyr. This has been one of the worst experiences I've had in the past few years. I spent months assembling all the components and building the wing -- while doing it I wrote the Zephyr FPV build manual, which I know many of you have found helpful.
I have created the attached picture that shows where the wing must have gone down. The area is impossible to penetrate by foot. It's completely overgrown with trees, bushes, bamboo, high grass, swamp, etc. Impossible to do a foot search... I tried.
The wing has a phone number and reward written on it, but so far nobody called. That, to me, means that the wing is somewhere in the area that nobody is walking around in.
If you live around New York and feel like doing a little search and rescue FPV flying over the area in the picture, please let me know. If you find/recover my Zephyr, the reward will be $600 USD.
The attached picture shows where I was and also shows where the last GPS coordinates were that my GS received. When the video signal went out, I was headed towards the water away from my position. It's possible that the plane flew a little bit further, but most likely went down in close proximity to where the last GPS point was recorded.
Link to high res picture
Google Map:
http://goo.gl/maps/3RMM
Pictures of my Zeph:
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