Steve Fosset, what's the rest of the story?

[1Tracker]

1tracker,

Back about 21 years ago, I was on a little "desert jaunt" with some of my other SOF compadres. We were "hiking" along the eastern edge of a well-known valley that is used quite often in "RED FLAG" exercises. While moving along, I stumbled upon...almost literally...part of an F-15 that was destroyed in a mid-air collision with another aircraft over two years before. It had never been found...and this was in the Nevada high desert. We picked up some of the classified gear and hauled it out, and marked the location of the rest so we could report when we returned to Nellis AFB. So, my point is, things can get lost in the desert, and be difficult to find.

Ron

Point taken Ron; it must have something to do with the type of terrain/rock formations/colors, would be my guess on why it's so hard to find something with all the shadows out there.

No FP filed, that pretty much leaves the whole State of Nevada as the 'search area', answers my question.

 

[1Tracker]

Too true; I was doing a 6-month tour down in Ecuador (back in 97) and a side job we conducted were SAR missions for civilian aircraft that would go down in the upper basin of the Amazon head-waters. Do you want to know how much of that area has NEVER been mapped via satellite????? We had to special order a few maps to cover a few certain areas and it was still just a fraction of the white space that was still on most our maps. Sure, it's a "small world", but it's still a big-ass planet!!

ROCK6

You and return of JD make valid points that i was'nt considering regarding the aerial surveying ability of satellites. Like Ron53 said, the tech is'nt as good as we've been lead to believe by the media. it's still bugging me that someone with the caliber of Fossett's experience, just 'decides' to hop in and go for a ride. He of all people knew not to trust a mechanical contrivance such as a plane to be fail safe IMO.

 

[1Tracker]

I am a volunteer observer for WSDOT/WASAR and have been trained to look for crash sites. It is not as easy as it sounds. Yes all aricraft carry an ELT yet like all electronic devices it can fail under the right circumstances. Addtionally small aircraft do burn and when they do the wreckage is usally reduced to a small pile of blackened and burned metal. The only part that is typically left is the tail section. Additioanlly the ELT get burned up in the process and fails to perform as advertised.

We had a twin engine aircraft crash that occured in mountainous terrain back in early 2006. The search lasted for nearly a week was conducted in near blizzard conditions at times. At one point our snowcat passed within maybe 100 ft of the crash. Approxametly six months later the crash site was found by two forrest service employees who were checking out a deactivated logging road. they were not looking for an airplane or it's crash site. From the crash reconstruction the aircraft was under full power and in a nearly straight down dive when it made contact with the ground. The aircraft created a deep but compact crater and the aircraft compacted itself quite nicely into the ground. Almost like it made a hole and pulled it closed behind itself. I have seen the pics of the plane (pre crash), the crash site and the parts that were removed from the ground. Pretty hard to believe it was an airplane at one time.

Needless to say the probibility of detection even under ideal conditions is low.

I was just trying to play 'devils advocate' here, since I was a fan of fossett's adventures, sane or not. Definitely interesting what you posted above, makes you feel kind of insignificant does'nt it in the scheme of things?

 

[James 61]

I was just trying to play 'devils advocate' here, since I was a fan of fossett's adventures, sane or not. Definitely interesting what you posted above, makes you feel kind of insignificant does'nt it in the scheme of things?

No worries. I was just using this example of how difficult looking for a plane or an idividual can really be. It was a good topic. I've been curious about the outcome myself.

 

[Bernoulli]

There's a good opportunity for an organized "quest" here. Regular planned desert survival/searches covering an area at a time. Might not ever be successful, but it could be instructive and a lot of fun.