VH-MDX on Sunday Night program ... 2nd night

OK... so ,,, VH-MDX is still out there waiting to be found !... A few theories put out there... what do we think of

Quentins theory .. i.e. he found it on Google Earth ?.

Don's theory .. i.e. It's resting on Scattered Top mountain ?.

Mark's theory .. i.e. Mark is part of the effort lead by the NSW Police Force that has determined that VH-MDX is resting in the Williams River Valley...

All disparate locations when looked at across the local area... all in the Barrington Tops.

VH-MDX on Sunday Night program

What were your thoughts on the VH-MDX segment 'Devils Triangle' last Sunday night on the Sunday Night program ?.

Credible ?.

The VH-MDX blog is back !

Per my profile, I've only been aware of VH-MDX since 2010. Each year since then I have taken part in the annual Barrington Tops SAREX organised by the BWRS and have become very familiar with past, present and future efforts to locate the aircraft. With Nev currently being pre-occupied, he has asked me to continue administering the blog. Slightly different address, same intent..

Tim Mullaney

Hi Nev,


My name is Tim Mullaney and I live in Stroud NSW.

I moved from Sydney in 1978 at age 13 with my family to a farm at Allworth Park NSW ( located Stroud side of the Allworth township) , my father was a Qantas Pilot so I had been brought up with some knowledge and interest in aeroplanes , my Father would travel from Williamtown to Sydney as required for work and finished his career off as a Qantas 747 Captain , he unfortunately lost his pilots licence through late onset diabetes when he became insulin dependent, I also had some flying lessons at age 20.

On the night of the storm the plane went missing my Mother and I were inside our house watching television and heard a small plane travelling very low and it had some issues with the noise it was making like engine problems or because of the effect of the storm, we went outside the house to see if we could see anything but could not, we could clearly hear it was travelling south and it sounded like it was heading over property on the other side of the Bucketts Way from where we were (properties up Gunns Gully Road).

The next day we heard there was a plane that went missing in the storm and we phoned someone to report it at the time but I can not remember wether it was Williamtown airport or who ??  everyone including the media reports seemed sure it went missing at Barrington tops.

I spoke to a friend of mine Rob Murray who lived just down the road a few kilometers next to the deep creek bridge on the Bucketts Way and they heard the plane in trouble too, Rob and I went searching on horses up Gunns Gully road and travelled south through properties to Ebsworth road, we obvioulsy did not find anything but also realised that if a plane went into a lantana , scrub filled gully the wings could snap off and the fuselage could slide in underneath.


It has always played on my mind and when I think about it I can still hear  it in my mind, particularly when it is in the news.


It was in the news again a week or so ago saying about the documented search area.


Today on the way home from work I pulled over outside the Murrays farm to answer my mobile and then make a couple of calls, a vehicle pulled in and I asked if he was Rob as I had not seen him for probably 20 years and he said yes, we spoke for a while and I asked him if he remembered looking for the aeroplane with me all those years ago and he did not, but he went onto say he and his family remembered it and that they were only speaking about it the other night, his father John told him he had spoken to other property owners over the years who had also heard the plane in trouble so he apparently believes the line of travel could have taken the plane to the Williams River  as he feels it would have been found on the mor open properties to the south ( I guess a river which for a pilot if he could see it via lightning flashes etc would have seemed like a good option at the time).

The river would have seen many floods over the years as well so it may not not be of much help.


I am happy to speak to you about it if you like ( we could talk over the phone and both look at the google satellite map of the area to assist).


I know this is probably a curved ball for you to get your head around too but I see on the internet you are looking for more information and this may help.



Yours sincerely

                    

Tim

Tim Mullaney

Stroud NSW 2425

click once on the picture below to expand for viewing.  (Nev)


 

Off The Grid

To all my readers,

Thankyou to everyone who has contributed to this blog or who have come along for a look to learn more about the mystery of MDX.

Due to health, work and business commitments i dont make enough time to monitor the blog or even get up the tops like i used to, Matter of fact i didnt even do one trip last year!!!!

So this year i will gó  "off the grid" take a break and recharge the batteries while i get my shit together.

PLEASE keep posting comments, suggestions and your thoughts on MDX and i will publish them as soon as i can. Or act as the go between to pass on emails and contact numbers of interested parties who would like to discuss MDX with other like minded individuals.

Kind regards

Nev Dennard

Mike Hart

Nev

I was the ATS officer on the Sydney Sector (FIS 5) who had the misfortune
to be on duty when these events occurred. It was one of the worst
nights of my life. I later resigned from Air Services or the CAA as it
was then, to pursue a career elsewhere. I later became a QFI with 1 BFTS
RAAF Tamworth and an ATO and C&T Captain with Surveillance
Australia (Coastwatch). I spent the last few years of my working life as
the Industry Complaints Commissioner for CASA. I am now retired.

After nearly thirty years I have finally managed to bring myself to listen to
the audio tape of the night MDX went missing you provided on your blog
site. In my view the tape is out of sequence and the last bit should be
at  the front and the middle towards the end and therefore the tape is
not a reliable record of the events but merely pieces of the transcript.

FYI
I was never interviewed by anybody, either from the then  BASI or Air
Services Australia, nothing has changed my view in all this time that
the aircraft had had a vacuum pump failure and that subsequently the
pilot lost of control of the aircraft. I  have personally  had two such
incidents in my flying career which required full instrument approaches
on a limited panel, each time the loss of the pumps was insidious and
not easily detectable except for the fact that I was on instruments both
times and only a constant and proper IF scan alerted me early to the
fact that the AI did not agree with the rest of the instruments a
rigorous adherence to the basic adage Attitude Plus Power=Performance. I
do not blame the pilot in anyway, he was presented with a set of
circumstances which were beyond him at the time in an aeroplane that has
had more than its share of such failures which nobody really trained
for or took seriously. I can say that of the hundreds of pilots I
subsequently taught, trained and tested I made such all of them could
handle a limited panel and then some!

It was a very tragic accident and merely reinforced my professional view
that NGTVFR was merely a rating that allowed you to end up sometime in
an environment where you were going to come to grief.

Regards

Mike Hart

Nev

Thank you for responding. You may like to know that I was also rostered on
the same sector the next day when the search got underway in full with
daylight, from memory I think there were 22 aircraft including
helicopters involved, I remember afterwards being kept so busy as it
stopped one thinking about the events of the night before. They (the
search aircraft) found a few older wrecks but never MDX or any
indication of the crash site. My gut feeling at the time was that MDX
may have actually gone into Chichester Dam, I do recall that a small oil
slick was seen on the lake but this was discounted by searchers at the
time. It would be interesting if at some time somebody could do a sonar
run on the lake. There were it turned out quite a number of older wrecks
around the area north and east of Barrington Tops and these were
repeatedly found over and over again during the search. I always have
felt for the families and relatives involved as they have never had
satisfactory closure on this tragedy.

The search area problem from my perspective was that the winds and weather
on the night were quite mixed at or about 10,000 ft. they were very
strong westerlies of about 70 knots which would have produced quite
severe standing wave turbulence on the lee side or the coastal  ranges
there which I think was the final straw for the pilot as he tried to
climb out of the cloud he was in, the pilot reported to me that his ADF
and I think DG were spinning around, which is not related to the
pneumatic system issues but to me as an experienced pilot indicative
that the aircraft was probably actually in a spin at that point which
would have given him virtually a vertical trajectory from the position
at that time with only a little drift from wind.  Whilst we did get a
paint on radar at one stage it is very difficult to determine where the
aircraft may have tracked or been blown given the conditions on the
night.

As a matter of interest I had another Cessna 210 get lost on me when I was
transferred to WA in the Kimberly’s in almost identical circumstances
but I managed to get enough information from him to basically give him
directions and lessons on radio navigation and he eventually landed
safely at Fitzroy Crossing. I was later suspended and counselled for
doing this. I left Air Services shortly afterwards. Management at the
time were more interested in standing procedures and instructions than
safety in my view, you will get hints of that in the MDX tape where I
was instructed to ask the pilot inane or irrelevant questions about
endurance etc. That was the system at the time where there Operational
Control was exercised by a desk jockey (semi-retired or failed
controllers) in Sydney, the same people also ran the search, thankfully
that was later abolished and specialist SAR and Search Centres were
established and AMSAR is now the outcome.

I never liked the 210, it was originally a 4 seat aeroplane with wing
struts when it was first made by Cessna and then was later stretched to 6
seats and the struts removed. The aircraft would have been very heavy
with 6 adults and luggage on board and I really doubt that it was
properly within its centre of gravity limits. This would have made the
aircraft difficult to control in pitch and this meant the aircraft could
be easily overstressed and its turbulence penetration speed was also
very low compared to its cruise speed (about 100 knots versus 150 knots)
there had been numerous accidents where pilots had inadvertently
overstressed the aeroplane and pulled the wings off, so it may well be
that the wings are in one place or several places and the fuselage body
in another and it would be badly compacted either way, so really anybody
looking for the aircraft would probably only see perhaps a wing tip or
wing and a bit of tail.

Best of luck.

Mike Hart

Bendemeer NSW

Bob Campbell

Hi! Nev, Just heard back from the NTSB & they have no intention of reopening the search for MDX, even though I explained what I had worked out & proberly being in the Lake. So it's up to other people as usual! There's a full time American crew looking for missing WWII service personal still, I know it's not quite the same, but the families would like to think the Aust. Gov cared a little & would act on new info! or at least check the info out!