Drunken monkeys go swimming, with the car!

[Gary D.]

Call out last night would have been a recovery had they not rescued themselves.

We get called to an occupied vehicle in the river. Normally no big deal, right, except it is 65 miles into National Forest on dirt logging roads. Several drunken kids can’t keep the car on the road and decide to drive into a fast moving deep section of river.

Someone was on their shoulder and allowed them to get to shore. I don’t know how many were in the vehicle but one was to many. I was told that one doesn’t live very far from me, like on the same street.

Before we get very far we get canceled. So now we have to go look for a kegger with dozens of drunken monkeys acting stupid. Four of us, a traffic unit, Sgt., patrolman and I looked for 7 hours and found nothing but some evidence where several keggers had been. They must have figured we were going to be up after the accident and split.

So 176 miles of national forest later I surface empty handed as did the other three. The bad part is radio communications is very poor back there. Talk when you can because it doesn’t happen often. The western edge of the Rockies are not the best for communication other than smoke signals.

This year just make up for two quiet years.

Gary D.

 

[pipedope]

I know ways to help with the radio problem.

It is easy and fairly cheap in the amateur area but for commercial use it gets a little more tricky.

The answer for places where VHF doesn't cut it but you don't need more than a few hundred miles of range the best choice is HF NVIS. That stands for High Frequency Near Vertical Incidence Skywave. The choice of antennas and frequencies makes the majority of the transmitted signal go straight up where it is reflecter by the ionosphere and comes back down to earth covering a radius of a few hundred miles.

I used this in Antarctica for field parties and they were impressed at how good the communications were.

For commercial use you have the problems of frequency allocation and the need for commercial (expensive) radios.

Glad the drunks made it out OK.

 

[junior diver]

talking of drunks chech out this link

 

[diverbrian]

... the Good Lord takes care of fools and drunks and this band qualified on both counts.

I am glad that you didn't have to recover any bodies though. We have an instructor at the shop that recovered two bodies in a couple of years and told the sheriff's department that he couldn't do it any more.

I am glad that people can. I salute you.