Revision 2/26/2013 8:10 AM by Greg
It sits under 50 feet of water in the
Sparks Marina. Those who’ve ventured down to see it say it sneaks up
on you, appearing suddenly out of the green gloom, or knocking you
on the kneecap before you’ve seen it’s there.
It’s the F-4
Phantom, a 63-foot long, 6-foot high fighter jet which crews dropped
into the depths of the Sparks Marina on the 4th of July 2000. Since
then, it’s become one of the top attractions for scuba divers living
in or visiting the area.
Tied to an orange buoy about 100 yards off
the south side of the peninsula, the plane is easy to locate, even
for inexperienced divers.
But seeing the plane, many say, is tougher
than you might expect. The algae thriving in the Marina’s nutrient
rich waters keep visibility anywhere from 15 feet to a scant two
feet, but has been improving. Diving on the F-4 can be a challenging
when the visibility is low.
“There are times when I’ve followed that
cable down, and I don’t see the plane until my knees hit it,” said
Amadeo Flores, a 40-year-old Reno resident and retired police
detective. “(But) it’s got some potential for just excitement
because it’s challenging. More challenging that just going to (Lake
Tahoe’s) Sand Harbor. You want to experience some things and
challenge yourself a little bit.”
The plane, built in 1964, flew missions in
southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The F-4 arrived in Reno in
1975, and became part of the Nevada Air National Guard’s fleet until
a 1988 crash landing, which damaged it beyond repair.
Sparks resident, and owner of Tropical
Penguin Scuba, Kevin Schwartz acquired the plane in 2000, with the
intention of starting a scuba park at the Sparks Marina — the only
lake in the Truckee Meadows appropriate for open water scuba diving.
“As divers we wanted someplace close to
dive around here that would be kind of fun, and I thought an
airplane at the bottom of a local body of water would be fun, It’s
not something normally found on the bottom of a lake.” Schwartz
said.
Originally, Schwartz planned to drop the
plane in the Marina in September but agreed to postpone the event to
coincide with the first Star Spangled Sparks celebration in July
2001, when the plane was lowered into the water with an Nevada Amy
National Guard Chinook helicopter.
“People stopped dead on the freeway to
watch,” said Schwartz, who spent three years and roughly $10,000
acquiring, cleaning and transporting the plane. “To me it was
extremely worth it. I think that from the standpoint of the diver’s
community it’s just been very valuable. It creates something to talk
about and dive on. It’s amazing to me to this day, I’ll be talking
to someone who isn’t even a diver at the grocery store or at the
bank and they find out I’m a diver and they’ll ask if I’ve ever dove
the F-4. It’s been tremendous!”
Hans Baumann, a diver from Truckee, said
for him, the F-4 has a mysterious, magnetic quality.
“It’s hard to really explain other than
that, I’ve done over 50 dives in the Marina now over the last year
and a half,” said the 39-year-old truck driver. “I’ll take people
out there at any time when I’m available to do it. I keep going back
to it. To me, it’s a challenge.”
The challenge, most divers agree, is tied
to the low visibility. Visibility in the Marina is actually quite
typical for the area.
The F-4 Phantom
dive has been described as a slow process of exploration.
One diver says it’s kind of eerie,
initially. As you approach the plane, you can begin to make out the
shadow and the shape. And once you’re down on the airplane, you stay
relatively close to it and you just swim around and explore.
Schwartz had
bars installed over it so divers can’t climb in the cockpit, but you
can still see all the controls inside. As you swim underneath it you
can see all the landing gear. And you can swim in the engine bay on
the back end. It’s got enough room in there for one to two divers.
It’s not necessarily poor visibility by
mountain lake diving standards. When you talk about high mountain
lakes, typical visibility would be between 5 and 15 feet, and that’s
pretty much what is seen out at the Sparks Marina.