Hope fades that Fossett cheated death

[gateley]

CARSON CITY, Nevada (AP) -- With winter closing in, efforts to find aviator Steve Fossett have dwindled -- along with hopes that his proven ability to cheat death enabled him to survive a plane crash in the rugged desert of northern Nevada.

More than a month after he left for a short flight, no one has found any trace of him, and authorities have suspended the search, although some private efforts financed by Fossett's friends and family continue.

"My gut feeling is that he didn't survive the impact. It's so unlikely," said Maj. Cynthia Ryan of the Nevada Civil Air Patrol. She said if Fossett were alive but too injured to walk, he would have tried to signal searchers in some manner.

"He's not the kind of guy to just sit and wait for help to show up," Ryan added.

Lyon County Sheriff Allen Veil said Fossett's disappearance remains under investigation as a missing-person case, and authorities are not prepared to presume the aviator is dead.

"We will try to come to a conclusion, but we're not there yet," Veil said.

snip

More.... http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/08/fossett.search.ap/index.html

[Poll_Blind]

1. Emergency beacons range from about $500 to $1,500. Didn't he have one?

I haven't followed the case very closely, maybe he had one and it wasn't activiated. Or maybe it activated briefly and then stopped transmitting.

It seems really strange to get into any air vehicle that you're piloting and not have one. He's pretty famous- you'd imagine he'd be able to afford $1,500 for a piece of safety equipment.

Does anyone know details on this aspect of his accident?

PB

[melody]

3. He had two kinds, including a very pricey wristwatch model - neither activated

Which doesn't bode well for the condition of the aircraft -- or Steve.

[Poll_Blind]

8. Thanks for that info! No, it does not bode well. n/t

PB

[Xithras]

17. No, he didn't have the watch on.

His wife corrected everyone on that a couple of weeks ago. He did own the watch model, but he wasn't wearing it when he vanished.

[melody]

23. Well, that's a little piece of hope anyway -- thanks for the info n/t

[aquart]

2. Had he been lost flying food to Darfur...

AIDS medicine almost anywhere...

But he wasn't. He got his last big thrill.

[melody]

4. Steve was on a short local flight not a "last big thrill"

He also had done many good things for many people.

http://stevefossett.com/

[CreekDog]

5. His mission on that last flight seemed bogus to me

He was scouting for a location to do land speed trials.

In Nevada, the spot is pretty obvious and well known, Black Rock Desert.

What gives? If anybody could get the BLM to close off Black Rock for a speed trial, it would be Fossett. Heck, they kicked me off the Black Rock when I went there the last time the speed record was broken.

[Xithras]

18. They've backed off that story.

Apparently it grew out of a discussion he'd had with someone else shortly before taking off. They're saying now that it was probably just a pleasure flight, and that any scouting probably would have been secondary. He wasn't flying around between the playas, he was just out enjoying the day.

[yella_dawg]

6. Weird side to this story..

They found like six or eight previously unknown crash sites that weren't Fossett's plane.

[Poll_Blind]

7. !

That is unusual! Makes you wonder what the hell happened to him if they're looking so hard they're finding solving other mysteries while trying to solve his.

PB

[aquart]

9. Bodies?

[yella_dawg]

11. Don't know.

The crashes may have happened as far back as the fifties. All of them were several years old, at least. Coyotes gotta eat too.

[soothsayer]

10. Strayed over area 51 and shot down. coverup underway! (eh, it's a theory)

Disappeared to start a new life?

[Javaman]

12. He's now working as a bartender in Costa Rica under the name of

Mr. Jones.

[karlrschneider]

13. It sure is a weird situation. I'm almost convinced he's at the bottom of a lake

not too far from where he departed from. What baffles me, if that's the case, is HOW! There is one possibility that could explain that, though...engine failure at or after dusk and mistaking a lake for a flat dry emergency landing area.
That little plane he was flying is actually -hard- to accidentally crash...you can turn loose of all controls and it would damn near land itself.

[Squatch]

14. He's either coyote shit or a big chunk of jerky by now.

[applegrove]

15. Unbelievable to think that there are parts in the USA still today - that

are so wild and vast that he could not be found.

[Xithras]

19. Nevada is an interesting place.

There is a stretch of desert northeast of Fallon where an intrepid explorer can hike nearly 200 miles and only cross three deserted 2 lane roads. That's like traveling from New York to Boston. Most of the place is EMPTY.

It's not just a Nevada thing though. Most of the western states still have some big empty stretches...even California has some pretty huge empty spaces along its eastern edge.

People get lost in them...and die in them...every year.

[Xithras]

16. There's a possible scenario here that doesn't get mentioned much.

As has been mentioned several times, his plane was a very stable model capable of flying steady with little interaction from the pilot. Fossett is 63 years old and has made a career out of abusing himself by pushing himself to complete tasks that would make most of us scream for our mommies.

The lack of ANY sign of wreckage in spite of one of the most intensive aerial searches in that states history has prompted a few people to comment on a possible repeat of the Payne Stewart crash. It's possible that Fossett, being an older person, experienced a heart attack, stroke, or some other debilitating medical problem and that the plane simply flew on until it hit something tall or ran out of fuel. Most of the searchers don't want to discuss that scenario because, while plausible, it expands the possible search area by hundreds of miles. An at speed collision with a mountain or a dead stick nosedive from an at altitude stall would also only leave an unrecognizable pile of metal behind, and not the relatively intact plane that rescuers are hoping to spot.

Pilot medical emergencies cause crashes in this country every year. Fossett may have simply had the ill fortune to experience one in a deserted area where nobody could see him go down.

[gateley]

20. Interesting and valid possibility. nt

[karlrschneider]

21. That's a plausible scenario but it doesn't explain the total absence of an ELT signal.

I'm familiar with the Citabria and I really doubt it would fly very far with no control input. It may be fairly "stable" but it ain't THAT stable.

[Xithras]

24. Autopilot?

I've never flown a Citabria, but even my 35 year old 172 had a basic Bendix autopilot. I wouldn't trust it to hold a heading for more than 10 minutes, but it maintained altitude beautifully.

Scenario: He's flying along, his left side starts to go numb, he's not sure what's going on, so he flips on his AP. A few seconds later he keels over from the stroke. Two hours and 250 miles later, the plane runs out of fuel, stalls, and nosedives into the ground.

It's far more likely than the possibility that Hero Steve is out somewhere in the desert, impatiently waiting for us to pick him up.

[karlrschneider]

25. Well, I'd give big odds no Citabria ever had an AP installed. Do you know how the name was formed?

It's simply "Airbatic" backward...it is actually designed to NOT be particularly 'stable' because stability is the last feature you want in a plane with the desired ability to do unconventional maneuvers. But even with that caveat, I really don't think a Cit would 'auger in' violently...it would be similar to your 172...you obviously know it would pretty much make a 'hard landing' on its own if you just left it to its own descent profile in an out-of-fuel configuration. It just seems to me very unlikely the plane is on dry land...ELTs are very (some say too) reliable.

[Xithras]

28. Problem is, there really isn't that much water around there for the plane to crash in.

Large body wise, Walker is the closest major lake. It has Hawthorne along it's southern edge, a major military installation hugging the south shore, and the main North/South highway in the state running along its western edge. I think it's a stretch to believe that a plane like Fossett's could have gone down in that lake without anyone noticing. Lahontan, similarly, is a popular recreational lake with homes and a major highway skirting most of its length. I just don't see how a plane could have gone down there without someone seeing it.

At that time of the year, with the dry winter we had last year, everything else would have been either salt pan or too small to attempt a landing on.

[karlrschneider]

29. I'm just trying to imagine what might have happened, drawing on my own 45 years

as a commercial pilot and aeronautical engineer. A Citabria is about 25 feet long (and wide) and so could fit into a fairly small body of water. I live on one of the narrow parts of a large lake (Fort Gibson in eastern Okla) just alongside Whitehorn Cove Airport which I often fly into...it would be easy for a plane to miss the runway and sink in the lake without anyone noticing, especially if it was around dark-thirty.

[SoCalDem]

27. That was my first thought too. A man his age could have had a stroke or heart attack

and could have died instantly..

If that is not the case, then shame on him.. a bright wealthy guy like him.. for NOT taking a GPS device that could locate him..

[devilgrrl]

22. He's been found by now if he were still alive

but you never know.

[Elidor]

26. Unfortunate

I don't know much about him, but it sounds like he lived a very full life. And he probably didn't want to die in a nursing home anyway. Godspeed, pilot.

[Liberal_in_LA]

30. Tragic. Time to start fighting over the will.