Steve Fossett: Four Weeks On

Note from Ned–
George, thanks for the catch. That changed since I looked an hour ago. I’ve updated the post.

Maybe he’s being held in Area 51.

For anyone who has worked a search, the fact that he is still missing after a month and the radar data is only becomming available now is perfectly reasonable. For one thing aircraft wreckage never looks like aircraft wreckage from the air. You are looking for broken trees, burn marks, a debris field, anything out of the ordinary that a ground team can go in and look further on. If there are surivors who can set up signal panels, you have a better chance than if no one is able to interact from the ground.
As for radar…….Aircraft not flying under positive control are very difficult to track. It isnecessary to determine the condition of the airspace at the time of departure and follow sequential plots. If you are off on departure by a couple of minutes you can be following the wrong plane. If several planes took off at the same time you have to check out the flight path of all of the planes and determine how the flight terminated. It is also possible that the plane which was VFR was under the radar for some or all of its flight. Unlike in major metropolitan areas where a transponder and encoding altimeter is required, you are pretty much on your own. Even if the plane had the equipment, it was not required that he use it. There are thousands of flights each day under VFR rules that are not in contact with anyone for any portion of the flight, except to announce on the Unicom frequencies that they are departing or coming back. (Local talk channel used to augment visual flight, but not necessary manned. More of a ocurtesy thing with pilots than a requirement.)
Though it is becomming less and less frequent to have a flight down over land which is not found, it does happen. In the midwest, the first day of hunting season is the prime time for lost aircraft to be spotted in northern pine forests.
Trying to play needle in the haystack with radar plots is painstaking and timeconsumming and without solid known squawks to work with an almost impossible task.
The Air Force and the search teams are owed an apology.

I agree Annie, I flew helicopters in the Army. And I’m well aware of all that you’ve brought fourth. But what Ned has said about it, just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m sure the A.F. had valid and legit reasons not to give out the information. And I may even be reading too much into it. I don’t mean to say that the searchers aren’t doing a good job. I can somewhat understand their job, I did some searching for teams in the Army on a small base. Didn’t find them, even though they were alive and actually moving. It is a hard job, especially in a somewhat extreme environment.

Well said Chuck. Mr Fossett picked about the most challenging terrain possible in which to disappear (outside of Alaska). We SAR pilots in the middle part of the country can get pretty spoiled with consistent radar coverage almost to the surface, more population density (and more potential witnesses) and less rugged terrain than what is seen in Nevada.

Fosset was just found –On ABC news now !!!