Remember this aircraft?

http://www.barbadosrc.org/gallery/show_image.php?image=acro-up2.jpg

Nine days ago, the pilot screwed up, and she went down in the bush. It's
an area where grass grows thickly to a height of five feet, between the
wild tamarinds that can reach 12-15' height. Send creepers to snake
through the grass and sprinkle liberally with vines, and you have terrain
that can take you a minute to move a yard. And all the time you have less than 10' visibility. Navigation without a compass is hit-and-miss because
you can't see any landmarks.

Search parties went out every day for the last nine days. Sometimes two
in a day. I myself went on six searches. I blunted, and re-sharpened,
and blunted again, *two* (not one) cutlasses. I've hacked so much bush
that my arm, shoulder and back are aching. My right hand is raw with
blisters from the handles of the cutlasses, even though I carefully sanded
the handles to remove any rough spots. I've tripped and fallen over so
many vines that my knees are scraped raw. I've had my head tangled in so
many spiderwebs while the 4" web-owner scuttled over my face to escape,
that I have lost count.

Faithful hound, Dotcom the BushDog has been with me all the way!
Periodically I had to rescue him from the clutches of a particularly large spider, or untangle him from a nasty net of vines and creepers.

The search expanded each day, until yesterday, we were searching a box
half a mile on a side. Thankfully, the paths chopped through the bush
each day didn't have to be chopped again the next day, but the expanding
area obviously makes for a harder search. And you can use the paths
chopped yesterday, but then you're searching where someone has already searched! The obvious thing to do is locate a patch of bush that has *no* paths through it, and cut through, back and forth, searching where no man
hath searched before!

We had a point which we figured was the best-estimate point of impact,
near an old, overgrown well. Our searches radiated out from there.
Everyone had some good advice. The loudest spoken were those who never offered to help search. The general consensus after a week, was that it
had burrowed deep under a particularly thick clump of gradd and vines, and
was hiding there, invisible to all who passed close by, swinging a
cutlass.

Today, one of our members came to the club, saying that he heard there
was a lost aircraft to search for. He hadn't been up before, because he
had car trouble and only just got his Opel back. A search party set off
this afternoon, and withion minutes, the new searcher had found the plane!

Where was it?

Twelve foot up a tree that leaned right over the well...... :-/



---
þ Synchronet þ Made of wood and glue, but mostly glue!