A few years ago I was flying accross the Sahara desert at 10,000 feet in my diesel powered Twin Star aeroplane with long range tanks giving me a maximum range of 2,500 miles.
Below me I could see a sandstorm was obscuring the land surface but I knew I was flying across land that had not been visited for thousands of years save for the occasional tuareg.
The radar blipped & I saw that there was a plane (big by the radar signature) on an intersection path above me at 30,000 feet and making 500 knots of speed. No worries I thought .
Suddenly I saw smaller blips on the radar coming from the bigger planes signature.
Bang , my Twin Star was out of control , the port wing had been taken off by a Landrover falling out of the sky.No time to do anything but bale out.
Descending through the sandstorm on my parachute I was blinded . Suddenly I hit the ground
hard knocking the wind out of me.
The chute started to drag me along so I hit the release button and the chute ,harness & all was whipped away by the wind. Pulling my shirt over my head I lay there whilst the sandstorm continued and night fell.
I woke from a restless sleep at dawn, the sandstorm had gone and it was a bright hot clear day.
I started to investigate my surroundings.
I was on top of a 300 metre high Hoodoo. This is a desert feature that looks like a toadstool. A flat cap of rock on top of a smaller diameter pillar.
The flat cap that I was on was 10 metres thick and 400 metres across sitting on top of a 100 metre diameter pillar 290 metres tall.
Looking off the edge I could see the Broken fuselage of my Twin Star. It must have spiralled down like a sycamore seed. There was salvation. I could see that my trusty mountain bike had spilled out of the fuselage but it looked intact. More importantly inside the plane was a radio,epirb , gps & compass. There was salvation but how to get down to it?
I carefully explored the 1256 square metres of my prison. There was no way down and looking at the neighboroughing hoodoos( 500 metres away) the central columns were glass smooth with no handholds even if I could somehow negotiate a 150 metre overhang.
I saw that some items from that cargo plane had landed on top so I scoured the whole of the top and carefully collected every single item. I then sat down & made an inventory of everything there was. Here it is:-
1) a sheet of quite flimsy clear polythene, enough to make a solar still.
2) Enough dhydrated rations to last 6 months individually wrapped in very flimsy foil.
3) 1 small ball & peen Hammer
4) 1 piton
5) 1 hand fretsaw/scrollsaw with a pack of 40 blades
6) 2 Victorinox swisschamp penknives
7) a sleeping bag
8 ) a plastic bottle with top 2 litre capacity
9) a small plastic bowl big enough to take the contents of a rehydrated ration pack
10) A pocket pc
11) 10 lengths of wood 10 metres long, 3 cm deep 6.25 cm wide of rectangular section. It
appeared to be spruce or hoop pine.
12) a hand powered drill with 20 packs of bits ranging from 1mm to 5mm
13) 10 quite normal pencils
14) a clear plastic 20cm ruler graduated in metric.
It was clear to me that there was insufficient material to make any type of hang glider,parachute or aerofoil of any description. The plastic & foil would have ripped , ruptured or torn the moment that any attemt was made to use them in such a fashion & the sleeping bag & my clothes would not have provided sufficient surface area.
It was also clear to me that no one would come within visual distance within 25 years.
The only other thing on the top where i was marooned was sand and some small stones. No vegetation , no dead trees or other dead vegetation absolutely nothing else & nobody else not even a sand mouse.
By making a solar still I would just have enough water to drink each day & rehydate rations each day and those would only last 6 months.
I sat down & thought long & hard
10 minutes later an evil grin appeared on my face.
The first thing I did was to dig in the sand to make my solar still & whilst doing that I found a small scroll centuries old showing the exact location of King Solomon's mines.
I found nothing else during my imprisonment on that Hoodoo and in fact no one & nothing ever came within visual distance whilst I was up there.
5 weeks lateras I performed a slow and perfectly controlled descent to the ground I thought I imagine some idiots would have thought of sawing those lenghts of wood intothree or four lengthways and jointing them together somehow. That would have killed them for sure trying to get down like that.
I strolled up to the wreckage of my Twin Star, retrieved the epirb and then cycled out of this weird geological formation to some nice clear erg, sat down & set off the epirb.
Fritz Van Noon would have been proud of me. I even had my sleeping bag by the plane wreck containing the remaining rations and the plastic sheet and if I needed any of the tools I could always go back for them.
I was rescued less than 24 hours later.
Of course I then went on to find King Solomon's mines but I kept quiet about where they were and that is another story.
How did I get down from the Hoodoo 20 WRZ$ reward.
If anything is unclear just ask.
Don't bother googling this puzzle it is an original only to be found on PPCWAREZ.ORG
Below me I could see a sandstorm was obscuring the land surface but I knew I was flying across land that had not been visited for thousands of years save for the occasional tuareg.
The radar blipped & I saw that there was a plane (big by the radar signature) on an intersection path above me at 30,000 feet and making 500 knots of speed. No worries I thought .
Suddenly I saw smaller blips on the radar coming from the bigger planes signature.
Bang , my Twin Star was out of control , the port wing had been taken off by a Landrover falling out of the sky.No time to do anything but bale out.
Descending through the sandstorm on my parachute I was blinded . Suddenly I hit the ground
hard knocking the wind out of me.
The chute started to drag me along so I hit the release button and the chute ,harness & all was whipped away by the wind. Pulling my shirt over my head I lay there whilst the sandstorm continued and night fell.
I woke from a restless sleep at dawn, the sandstorm had gone and it was a bright hot clear day.
I started to investigate my surroundings.
I was on top of a 300 metre high Hoodoo. This is a desert feature that looks like a toadstool. A flat cap of rock on top of a smaller diameter pillar.
The flat cap that I was on was 10 metres thick and 400 metres across sitting on top of a 100 metre diameter pillar 290 metres tall.
Looking off the edge I could see the Broken fuselage of my Twin Star. It must have spiralled down like a sycamore seed. There was salvation. I could see that my trusty mountain bike had spilled out of the fuselage but it looked intact. More importantly inside the plane was a radio,epirb , gps & compass. There was salvation but how to get down to it?
I carefully explored the 1256 square metres of my prison. There was no way down and looking at the neighboroughing hoodoos( 500 metres away) the central columns were glass smooth with no handholds even if I could somehow negotiate a 150 metre overhang.
I saw that some items from that cargo plane had landed on top so I scoured the whole of the top and carefully collected every single item. I then sat down & made an inventory of everything there was. Here it is:-
1) a sheet of quite flimsy clear polythene, enough to make a solar still.
2) Enough dhydrated rations to last 6 months individually wrapped in very flimsy foil.
3) 1 small ball & peen Hammer
4) 1 piton
5) 1 hand fretsaw/scrollsaw with a pack of 40 blades
6) 2 Victorinox swisschamp penknives
7) a sleeping bag
8 ) a plastic bottle with top 2 litre capacity
9) a small plastic bowl big enough to take the contents of a rehydrated ration pack
10) A pocket pc
11) 10 lengths of wood 10 metres long, 3 cm deep 6.25 cm wide of rectangular section. It
appeared to be spruce or hoop pine.
12) a hand powered drill with 20 packs of bits ranging from 1mm to 5mm
13) 10 quite normal pencils
14) a clear plastic 20cm ruler graduated in metric.
It was clear to me that there was insufficient material to make any type of hang glider,parachute or aerofoil of any description. The plastic & foil would have ripped , ruptured or torn the moment that any attemt was made to use them in such a fashion & the sleeping bag & my clothes would not have provided sufficient surface area.
It was also clear to me that no one would come within visual distance within 25 years.
The only other thing on the top where i was marooned was sand and some small stones. No vegetation , no dead trees or other dead vegetation absolutely nothing else & nobody else not even a sand mouse.
By making a solar still I would just have enough water to drink each day & rehydate rations each day and those would only last 6 months.
I sat down & thought long & hard
10 minutes later an evil grin appeared on my face.
The first thing I did was to dig in the sand to make my solar still & whilst doing that I found a small scroll centuries old showing the exact location of King Solomon's mines.
I found nothing else during my imprisonment on that Hoodoo and in fact no one & nothing ever came within visual distance whilst I was up there.
5 weeks lateras I performed a slow and perfectly controlled descent to the ground I thought I imagine some idiots would have thought of sawing those lenghts of wood intothree or four lengthways and jointing them together somehow. That would have killed them for sure trying to get down like that.
I strolled up to the wreckage of my Twin Star, retrieved the epirb and then cycled out of this weird geological formation to some nice clear erg, sat down & set off the epirb.
Fritz Van Noon would have been proud of me. I even had my sleeping bag by the plane wreck containing the remaining rations and the plastic sheet and if I needed any of the tools I could always go back for them.
I was rescued less than 24 hours later.
Of course I then went on to find King Solomon's mines but I kept quiet about where they were and that is another story.
How did I get down from the Hoodoo 20 WRZ$ reward.
If anything is unclear just ask.
Don't bother googling this puzzle it is an original only to be found on PPCWAREZ.ORG
Last edited by sherlockx on Feb 19th, 2008, 10:31 am, edited 8 times in total.
...)