Emergency landing ends well

No one was hurt Saturday when the pilot of an experimental light sport aircraft made an emergency landing on the ice-covered Big Lake Saturday afternoon.

The Carlton County Sheriff's Office described the aircraft as a "home-built fixed-wing aircraft" in a news release, explaining that the landing was planned after pilot Rich Mattson realized one of the landing gear wheels had broken off when he departed from Fish Lake in Fredenberg Township in St. Louis County.

After originally planning to land at the Cloquet Airport, Mattson determined landing at Big Lake (west of Cloquet) would be safer. Dispatch got the call about the emergency just before 1 p.m. and Mattson made the landing at 1:46 p.m., according to the Sheriff's Office.

Nearby resident Paul Carpenter captured video of the aircraft making several passes over the lake while emergency responders and plenty of bystanders waited. On the final pass, the video shows Mattson cut the engine and brought the small sport aircraft down almost perfectly, with the landing only slightly askew because of the missing wheel. The ice remained intact.

Carpenter said he heard about the planned landing at the airport on the scanner, then it was switched to Big Lake, his "front yard."

"He did five or six very low flyovers for about 20 minutes and created lots of noise and commotion," Carpenter told the Pine Knot News.

"Everyone came out of their fish houses and watched, and police [and fire/ambulance crews] staged at the Lounge," he added, referring to the bar at the Big Lake Shores campground.

Carpenter posted a video to Facebook, complete with commentary.

"God was with this fella today," he said after riding out to the landing site on a snowmobile, where emergency personnel were waiting and dressed for a cold-water rescue.

"Welcome back to earth," Carpenter said to the pilot.

"I figured it would be a lot better here than on asphalt," Mattson told Carpenter.

Mattson declined to speak with the Pine Knot News while the incident is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The emergency landing was not the first time the Grand Lake resident has flown in Cloquet. Mattson is a member of the local chapter of the national Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) here. Cloquet chapter president Rich Schimenek said the group of about 30 includes members with vintage and modern airplanes, along with experimental airplanes like the one Mattson was flying.

"Those could be built from a kit or a person might assemble one from scratch, using parts from other planes or that they build themselves," Schimenek said, estimating that nearly a third of the group have experimental planes.

Mattson's aircraft is not an ultralight, he explained. While ultralights don't require a licensed pilot and have lower limits on weight and speed, an experimental light sport aircraft like Mattson's has similar requirements to any other airplane, including that the pilot must be licensed.

Coincidentally, Schimenek sent a story to the Pine Knot about his own close call with a ski plane the day before Mattson landed on Big Lake. (See "Tales of another scary landing" on Page 7.) He said Mattson's decision to land at the lake - with its greater surface area and hard-packed surface - was the right one.

What drives people to belong to clubs like the EAA?

"I always wanted to build a plane when I was younger and I was fortunate enough to do it. It's also a lot less expensive because you can be your own mechanic since you built it," Schimenek said. "Besides that, it's just fun."

The Fond du Lac Police Department, Cloquet Police Department, Cloquet Area Fire District, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and St. Louis County Rescue Squad responded to assist with the emergency landing. The Carlton County Sheriff's Office and Fond du Lac Police department will continue to investigate this matter along with the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration.