NO INJURY IN ABRUPT LANDING.Byline: CAROL ROCK Staff Writer CANYON COUNTRY -- The pilot of a small plane tried to make a soft landing Tuesday in the Santa Clara River Santa Clara River may refer to:
Shortly before noon, John Gardos, 77, of Reseda was flying his 1961 Cessna 182 en route home from visiting friends in Redding Redding, city (1990 pop. 66,462), seat of Shasta co., N central Calif., on the Sacramento River; inc. 1872. A principal tourist center for a mountain and lake region, it also has lumbering, food-processing, and diverse manufacturing. when the engines cut out. He brought the plane down in the dry creekbed behind Langside Drive in Canyon Country, shattering the fiberglass around the plane's wheels, nose and undercarriage as he hit a rock jetty supporting an emergency road behind a residential area. Gardos was not hurt in the landing and his two passengers -- friend Kevin McIntyre and his border collie border collie, breed of medium-sized, sheepherding dog developed in the British Isles. It stands about 18 in. (45.7 cm) high at the shoulder and weighs from 30 to 45 lb (13.6–20.4 kg). K-Bar -- got out of the plane uninjured. Brittany Jones, 15, and Elysha Deo Campo, 16, were shopping at Home Depot nearby when they heard the plane's engine fail and rushed to look, calling 911 on a cell phone. ``We got on Soledad and saw him come down,'' Jones said, pointing to the disabled plane from her vantage point at the top of the road. ``The right rudder turned and he landed here. We followed him. We wanted to make sure he was OK.'' While McIntire and K-Bar rested in the shade of the plane's tail, Gardos was on a cell phone telling his mechanic, who was vacationing in Wisconsin, about his trouble and arranging for the plane to be taken back to Whiteman Air Park in Pacoima. Asked by sheriff's deputies how he felt, Gardos grimaced grim·ace n. A sharp contortion of the face expressive of pain, contempt, or disgust. intr.v. grim·aced, grim·ac·ing, grim·ac·es To make a sharp contortion of the face. , then grinned, and said, ``I could do a tap dance.'' The spry An application framework from Adobe for building rich Internet applications using HTML. Spry takes the tedium out of writing AJAX code and also includes routines for creating animation effects and building widgets. For more information, visit http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry. septugenarian has been flying for 53 years and claims 7,000 hours at the controls. An official from the Federal Aviation Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), component of the U.S. Department of Transportation that sets standards for the air-worthiness of all civilian aircraft, inspects and licenses them, and regulates civilian and military air traffic through its air traffic control arrived at the scene at 12:45 p.m. to begin an investigation. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) Pilot John Gardos of Reseda talks to FAA investigator Brian Ashton near his small plane, which Gardos set down in a Canyon Country wash on Tuesday when it lost power on the way to a Pacoima airfield for a landing. Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer |
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