Aviation record-holder Steve Fossett missing

[Gordon Gekko]

World aviation record-holder Steve Fossett is missing and a massive search is under way in western Nevada, a Nevada aviation spokeswoman said Tuesday.


Steve Fossett is missing and a search is under way.

Fossett holds the record for the first solo, non-stop, non-refueled airplane trip around the world, set in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer in 2005.

A year later he used GlobalFlyer again to break the world's flight distance record, traveling more than 26,000 miles in 76 hours.

In 2002, he achieved the first solo balloon flight around the world, traveling 20,626 miles in 14 days.

Mission Public Information Officer Civil Air Patrol spokeswoman Maj. Cynthia S. Ryan told the Nevada Record-Courier that three crews were in the air looking for Fossett's blue and white aircraft and that more were on the way.

"We will be launching more shortly," she told the newspaper, and the search area covers hundreds of square miles of rugged terrain.

[nightspirit]

Heard he didn't even had a parachut on board. Hopefully he will be found soon. Along with Bertrand Piccard he is one of the interesstings adventurer of our time.

[Gordon Gekko]

MINDEN, Nevada (AP) — U.S. National Guard C-130s and helicopters with infrared and thermal imaging equipment scoured the soaring peaks and sagebrush desert of northwest Nevada early Thursday for any sign of missing adventurist Steve Fossett.

Fossett disappeared Monday after taking off from a private airstrip in a single-engine plane to scout sites for an attempt at a land-speed record in a rocket-propelled car.

The painstaking search across more than 600 square miles (1,555 square kilometers) has covered only a fraction of the territory that could be hiding the airplane. Finishing the fly-overs of the most likely landing spots could take another week.

The Civil Air Patrol and additional flight crews were scheduled to resume a full search shortly after daybreak Thursday.

Fossett's friends and search leaders remain confident the world-famous adventurer is alive. They point to his experience climbing some of the world's best-known peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

"If anyone has to be lost out there, this man has the skills to survive," Nevada Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan said Wednesday. "With water, he could live out there for two weeks."

Fossett's single-engine plane, a Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon, carried both water and food, but there also were troubling signs.

The missing plane's locator device has not sent a signal, there has been no communication from the plane's radio, and an emergency wristwatch Fossett wore to signal his location has not been activated.

Some veteran pilots speculated he may have fallen victim to the treacherous and sometimes deadly Sierra Nevada winds that squeeze through the narrow canyons.

"There's been times when I've been flying in the wind and my blood turns cold," said Adam Mayberry, a private pilot and former spokesman for the Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

Emotions have run from hope to disappointment. On Wednesday, the searchers were briefly encouraged when one aerial team spotted a downed aircraft it believed was Fossett's.

"I have to tell you that the excitement level in the emergency center was as high as I could imagine it could ever get," Ryan said, saying the room erupted in cheers.

The excitement ebbed quickly after a helicopter crew determined the wreckage was from one of dozens of old downed planes that litter the canyons of Nevada's arid high desert.

Fossett is familiar with danger and high-octane rescues, after years of breaking — or attempting to break — speed and distance records on land and by air. He has held 116 such records.

In 1996, Canadian authorities sent crews to search the Bay of Fundy off New Brunswick after Fossett sent a distress signal during an early attempt to be the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon.

Fossett decided to abort the flight after his electrical system failed off the Canadian coast. He landed in a farmer's field near the Maine line.

In August 1998, Fossett had to be rescued after his balloon crashed into the Coral Sea about 500 miles (805 kilometers) off Australia's coast during his fourth attempt to circle the globe. It plunged 29,000 feet (8,840 meters) after it was struck by hail and lightning during a fierce storm.

An international search-and-rescue effort began after his electronic beacon was activated. When Fossett was found, a French military plane dropped him a life raft with food, water and a canopy to shield him from the tropical sun. He was finally rescued by a yacht.

Fossett finally succeeded in circumnavigating the globe in a balloon in 2002, and three years later became the first solo pilot to circle the globe in an airplane without refueling.

Professor Ray Arvidson, chairman of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at Washington University in St. Louis, worked at the ground operations center for three of Fossett's balloon flights.

He recalled Fossett's strength during the failed 1998 balloon journey, when he floated in an emergency raft for days before his rescue.

"I'm worried," Arvidson said, "but this guy is a survivor."

[Gordon Gekko]

MINDEN, Nev. -- As the search for missing adventurer Steve Fossett continues, rescuers are turning to a supervision camera that can distinguish objects like wreckage far more efficiently than the human eye.

The Civil Air Patrol has brought in a special plane from its Utah branch fitted with supervision equipment from the Overland Park, Kan.-based Archer Technologies Inc.

The ARCHER -- an acronym for Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance -- is capable of panchromatic aerial imaging far more detailed than plain sight or ordinary photography can gather.

A special camera that's mounted to the belly of the plane transmits detailed images in real time to a flat-screen monitor for operators on the plane to examine. It also captures the views in its memory at a rate of 30 GB per hour, to be analyzed more meticulously and manipulated on the ground later. That data is tagged with global-positioning coordinates as well, so searchers can return to an area if ground technicians spot something.

"It is a better set of eyes than a human set," says Col. Drew Alexa, director of advanced technology and the ARCHER program manager for the Civil Air Patrol based in Colorado Springs, Colo. "The human eye sees basically three bands of light. The ARCHER sensor sees 50. It can see things that are anomalous in the vegetation such as metal or something from an airplane wreckage."

The technology was developed in the 1990s for a variety of military applications, but Alexa led the charge to put it to use in the CAP’s search operations.

The CAP has owned 17 of these $32,000 units since a 2002 federal grant provided $6 million to buy them. But they’ve only come into use in searches like the Fossett effort since 2005, because they needed to be individually tested and fitted onto single-engine Gippsland GA-8 Airvans, an Australian aircraft that costs $450,000 each. The cost of the planes was covered by the U.S. Air Force, which oversees the volunteer CAP.

Alexa cites searches in Georgia and Maryland where the ARCHER spotted the plane wrecks in the past year, although in each case the passengers were dead.

The ARCHER does have limitations. Its reflective-light technology only works during the day, and it must fly at 2,500 feet -- much higher than the 1,000-foot altitude flown by the Cessnas in the Fossett search. It also can only analyze a 0.1-square-mile region at a time. And while it does provide information in real time, the more intensive analysis takes many more hours.

"It usually works better where you have some information" to narrow down the search area, Alexa says. "ARCHER does not see underground, underwater, under the snow, and it’s not going to see through trees. If plane is buried under a tree canopy, it’s not going to see that."

Fossett, who's used custom-built vessels to set some of his more than 110 air, land and sea world records, would be intrigued if he knew, says longtime friend and Boy Scouts of America president Rick Cronk. Fossett is a lifelong Boy Scout and president of the National Eagle Scouts Association.

"He would be more than fascinated," Cronk says. "He loves this stuff."

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[Gordon Gekko]

September 21, 2007

Alien towns. Lost 19th-century cannons. Lake monsters. Frozen bodies swimming at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Nevada is a vortex for the unexplained.

And it appears at this writing that we have another whopper of a puzzle to add to the list.

The case of missing aviator Steve Fossett who disappeared from the Flying M Ranch near Yerington Sept. 3 has techno-sleuths, psychics and concerned folks around the world focused on our region.

The attention is natural, and for the same reason we see grown men in suits scribbling out sudoku puzzles in airports -- our race is obsessed with solving problems.

We want to know what happened to this most incredible man who has broken world records and triumphed over fear time and again only to be taken down during a simple day trip.

Fossett's tale inflates exponentially as the weeks pass without any signs of the famed pilot or his blue and white plane, building upon his already legendary life.

"We like to think that anything is findable with enough resources. But it could turn into another Amelia Earhart situation," Ric Gillespie told the Associated Press this week.

Government aircraft have searched more than 20,000 square miles around Northern Nevada, followed every lead by air and foot and have found nothing. Family and friends of the famous adventurer have also used state-of-the-art technology and aircraft to scour the land and have come up empty-handed.

And for the first time, Internet users have joined the effort. Tips and satellite coordinates have poured in from all corners of the globe by well-intended people who want answers.

One reader sent me an unusual e-mail message this week. The reader's psychic friend had a vision of Fossett landing in Walker Lake (her best guess for the water she envisioned). The reader wrote: "She said his plane had a cracked block and he was trying to get back to the ranch when he crashed."

Like Earhart, Fossett has fans the world over. Many wonder how much the search has cost our government agencies as the constant drone continued overhead for two solid weeks until the Civil Air Patrol ceased air operations on Monday.

Final numbers aren't in, but it surely pales in comparison to Earhart's search.

In 1937, when Earhart disappeared, the U.S. government spent $4 million looking for her, making the search the most costly and intensive air and sea operation of its kind in history.

Coincidently, Fossett's plane could have landed close to the area of another mystery Nevadans have been trying to solve for more than a century -- Union General John C. Fremont's lost cannon.

Snow was deep over the Carson Pass in January 1844 as Fremont's group, which included Kit Carson, tried to cross. The 1835-model mountain howitzer they carried proved too cumbersome and they left it behind somewhere near the state line and Bridgeport, Calif.

"They were in the vicinity west of the Walker River," said Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha. "They just walked away from it."

The group headed to California and never returned to find it. Along the way, Fremont is believed to be the first white man to view Lake Tahoe. Treasure hunters have looked for the prized cannon without success, using Fremont's journals as a guide.

"Like buried treasure, people will look for that cannon 'til kingdom come," Rocha said.

Other enigma that may never be solved includes Tahoe Tessie, the lake-faring monster that believers say lurks in the icy waters of Lake Tahoe (no matter how much science is thrown at them to disprove this notion).

Another stumper is the business about frozen bodies at the bottom of that same lake in the Sierra. Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau was supposedly frightened right out of his wetsuit during a dive in a sub in the mid-1970s. "The world isn't ready for what was down there," he was quoted as saying.

Cousteau did not release photographs from the deep-water trip, adding to the mystery. Many divers have since requested to duplicate the dive.

And, of course, the mother of all mysteries: Area 51. Scientist Bob Lazar who first spilled the beans about working with alien spacecraft at the site in 1989 is now living in New Mexico with his wife, Joy, their dogs and a rescue horse, and reportedly no longer talks about the little green fellows.

I hope by the time this is published, Fossett has been found and this mystery can be put to rest. If not, Nevada will keep his memory alive in its treasure trove of unsolved mysteries.

Jill Lufrano is tri-county assistant editor and lives in Douglas County.

[nightspirit]

Steve Fossett, Missing Adventurer, Is Declared Dead at 63



By MARGALIT FOX
Published: February 16, 2008

Steve Fossett, the wealthy, record-setting adventurer who for years blithely sailed, soared and drove through all manner of danger before disappearing in September during what was meant to be a routine short flight, was declared dead Friday by a Chicago court. He was 63, and had homes in Chicago; Beaver Creek, Colo.; and Carmel, Calif.

Mr. Fossett was declared legally dead by Judge Jeffrey A. Malak of the Circuit Court of Cook County, said Mary C. Downie, a lawyer for Mr. Fossett’s widow.

read more ->Steve Fossett, Missing Adventurer, Is Declared Dead at 63

[zengrifter]

He was quite the adventurer. They never found his plane crash? I smell a CONSPIRACY! zg

[Canceler]

Originally Posted by zengrifter

I smell a CONSPIRACY! zg

You mean like he faked his own death?

[davidpom]

Originally Posted by Canceler

You mean like he faked his own death?

I think he was playing blackjack at the time and just hit a bump.

[glovesetc]

declared dead by a probate judge last week . May never find him . Might be sipping cool drinks in a tropical paradise with some 20 year old nympho .