CAP Aircraft Searching for Steve Fossett

[jimmydeanno]

I don't know, but I think those horse might feel as though they've been replaced...

(link sent me to a video of "Segway Polo" in san fransisco...)

[ltcmark]

I don't know, but I think those horse might feel as though they've been replaced...

(link sent me to a video of "Segway Polo" in san fransisco...)

Sorry, try again, I fixed the link.

[A.Member]

Did she have her badges and name plate on backwards???

Ugh.  Yes. 

She might speak well but what a mess.  Wrong patches, badges and nameplates backwards.   Get it together already.  Message to the Maj.:  Read 39-1 for crying out loud!

[JohnKachenmeister]

Poor girl can't even dress herself!

Even when I have had to get dressed in a hurry in a closet when some husband came home from work early, I still got my wings on the correct side!

[RiverAux]

Looks like the search is over for the most part.  Interesting that they're still going to have military choppers flying but CAP is out of it except for having a few planes on standby. 

[SDF_Specialist]

It's not too interesting. We've done just about all we can, and unfortunately had no positive results. So since a lot of the SAR help is standing down, does this mean that the search is basically over?

[Smokey]

How embarrassing.......can't even use the excuse that the photog reversed the image.  Hope she at least doesn't have her underwear on backwards. 

I think in one of the early press interviews she was in a flightsuit with the old round CAP patch instead of the command patch also.

[bosshawk]

To get off the beating of the good Major from Nevada and back to the search.  CA CAP has been largely ignored by the media: maybe from lack of PR resources in CA or because the media has been concentrated at Minden, NV and haven't visited the CA base at Bishop.  Don't know and it really doesn't matter.  What matters is that CAP, in its entirety, has flown over 1200 hours of search during this past two weeks, without a serious incident of any sort that I know of.

Just to toot the CAWG horn, we have flown about 60% of the search hours and NVWG the other 40.  I have a feeling that the Bishop ICs heaved a big sigh of relief that they didn't have to deal with the press.

The decision to reduce the search effort was a combined AFRCC, CAWG, NVWG, Air Guard and Law Enforcement decision, made at a meeting yesterday.  Apparently, there hasn't been any new intel made available in a long time and just droning around the mountains and desert gets counter-productive after awhile.

Yes, it appears that the Major from NV had her uniform accessories on backwards.  Shame, shame!!!!!!

[SDF_Specialist]

Does anyone have a link, or know how large the search area is/was? Has the search area gradually grown in hopes of turning something up?

[bosshawk]

Ryan: I have heard areas from 17,000 to 20,000 sq nm given out as the size of the search area.  Remember, however, that there is a lot of vertical distance that isn't figured in this search figure.  I talked to one crew last night that had searched a heavily wooded grid in the Sierras and they figured their POD as about 5%, at altitudes from 8500 to 12,000 ft above sea level.  Having flown in some of that area on other searches, that isn't a bad POD: you simply can lose a lot of things in that dense forest.  I have seen aircraft go into that forest and are never found from the air: either a survivor walks out and pinpoints it or a hiker or hunter finds it.

[NIN]

I can agree with that. While not as large of a mountain, we had a Lear Jet smack into Smarts Mountain in Dorchester, NH about 11 years ago while attempting to get into Lebanon Airport in a Christmas Eve snowstorm.

After about a 2-3 week CAP and NH Fish & Game search, and multiple attempts by private individuals over the course of 2-3 years, the wreckage was discovered by a forester at the 2300 ft level of the mountain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_New_Hampshire_Learjet_crash

Following the discovery, both Fish & Game and the National Guard literally hovered helicopters over the crash site and the consensus was that the wreckage would not have been visible during the search.  Never mind the fact that it was snowing to beat the band when the crash occurred, and the subsequent ice storm in Spring 1998 helped to cover the wreckage more.

[SDF_Specialist]

So I assume that the AFRCC has totally lost the signal making this pretty much a blind search for the aircrews. Can't they just go back, and send a GT to it last known point? Forgive me, but I am not familiar with anything west of Toledo, so I have no clue what kind of area they are searching in. What are the odds that all of the organizations out there searching are going to quit the search soon? Lastly, thanks for your response Hawk. At least it makes more sense as to why there were 20 CAP aircraft out there as well as military and other resources.

[SJFedor]

So I assume that the AFRCC has totally lost the signal making this pretty much a blind search for the aircrews. Can't they just go back, and send a GT to it last known point? Forgive me, but I am not familiar with anything west of Toledo, so I have no clue what kind of area they are searching in. What are the odds that all of the organizations out there searching are going to quit the search soon? Lastly, thanks for your response Hawk. At least it makes more sense as to why there were 20 CAP aircraft out there as well as military and other resources.

The aircraft's last known point was when and where it departed from, the Flying H ranch. From what I've heard, AFRCC has never had a signal, so this has been a "visual" search the entire time. If there was an active ELT, this would have been over in a matter of hours.

[SDF_Specialist]

So I assume that the AFRCC has totally lost the signal making this pretty much a blind search for the aircrews. Can't they just go back, and send a GT to it last known point? Forgive me, but I am not familiar with anything west of Toledo, so I have no clue what kind of area they are searching in. What are the odds that all of the organizations out there searching are going to quit the search soon? Lastly, thanks for your response Hawk. At least it makes more sense as to why there were 20 CAP aircraft out there as well as military and other resources.

The aircraft's last known point was when and where it departed from, the Flying H ranch. From what I've heard, AFRCC has never had a signal, so this has been a "visual" search the entire time. If there was an active ELT, this would have been over in a matter of hours.

Isn't a plane required by FAA regulations to have an ELT on board? Forgive me, I'm not a pilot. Was there no flight plan? I feel bad for Mr. Fossett's family that there has been no news as to locating even a fragment of the plane to give some hope that his body would be found. I also read something about he might have been wearing an ELT watch. Granted this would not have lasted long due to battery, or maybe fire. But I am surprised that there was never an ELT signal. Not saying it can't happen, just surprised.

[mawr]

Sometimes people do dumb things.  I IC'd a mission last year where we learned that the aircraft we were looking for had sat on airport ramp two weeks prior with the ELT going off for 5-6 hours before it was turned off. 

We got occassional audible signals but no SAT hits.  Apparently the battery was never replaced in the ELT after the incident two weeks before.

Anything could have happened with Mr. Fossett's flight.

[SJFedor]

Isn't a plane required by FAA regulations to have an ELT on board? Forgive me, I'm not a pilot. Was there no flight plan? I feel bad for Mr. Fossett's family that there has been no news as to locating even a fragment of the plane to give some hope that his body would be found. I also read something about he might have been wearing an ELT watch. Granted this would not have lasted long due to battery, or maybe fire. But I am surprised that there was never an ELT signal. Not saying it can't happen, just surprised.

Yeah, they're required. However, they can be damaged in the crash and not work, land upside down with the antenna in the ground or severed, and produce a signal that can only be heard by recievers within 50 yards, or the battery could have just been dead or very weak to begin with and not have tripped the SARSAT system. We get a lot of false ELT calls because they're only quasi-reliable and can trip easily, on the other side, they can be broken, have a dead battery, or just not work in a crash.

Look at CAP-ES.net, and you'll see that Lt Col Lanis has come up with cruel ways to hide practice beacons so that they're tough to find. Most airplanes don't crash wit the antenna sticking straight up into the air, and training to that standard really does not give GTs and aircrews the tools to use when they're looking for the real deal, with the antenna broken off partially or facing a certain way that it can only be picked up from a certain direction.

As for the ELT watch, read Midway Six's review of the watch. It doesn't put out enough power to trip the SARSAT system, and is only good for short range line of sight tracking.

[SDF_Specialist]

Speaking of cruel ways to find a practice beacon, I was on a team that had to find one that was stuck in a ammo can with the antenna down. That was an interest practice, but a lot was learned that day.

[JohnKachenmeister]

Ryan:

About 15 percent of all crashes fail to transmit any ELT signal.

[SDF_Specialist]

Ryan:

About 15 percent of all crashes fail to transmit any ELT signal.

John, I've read that. It seems to defeat the purpose of the ELT in my opinion. But that's just me.

[davedove]

Ryan:

About 15 percent of all crashes fail to transmit any ELT signal.

John, I've read that. It seems to defeat the purpose of the ELT in my opinion. But that's just me.

But that still means that 85 percent do transmit a signal, which is a lot better than zero percent.