Searchers looking for world record holder Steve Fossett

Hopefully yes, hopefully he's still walking.

I just got my .sig for this board.

“Sometimes it just takes a warm body to walk down the gully to see what you can see,” Pierini
 
Couldn't it be considered criminal negligence to only report this a week and half after you supposedly saw/heard it?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/13/fossett/

As the search for Fossett began its 10th full day, investigators focused on new leads from people who remembered seeing or hearing something unusual on Labor Day, the day the record-setting aviator vanished. See a map of the search area »

Searchers followed up on a tip received Wednesday from a woman who had been staying in a remote cabin just over the state line in California, at Sonora Pass north of Yosemite National Park.

"She was in her cabin, and heard a plane fly over ... and then she heard a loud explosion or a loud crash noise and saw a little bit of smoke," said Maj. Ed Locke of the Nevada National Guard.

Investigators from the Alpine County, California, Sheriff's Office met with the woman on Thursday, Locke said, to pin down where she heard the sounds, and then began a ground search. It's expected to take four to five days to finish searching the rugged pass area.

Back in Nevada, searchers on the ground combed an area where two witnesses had reported seeing a plane fly into a canyon and not come out.

Locke told reporters Thursday morning that the search was 80 percent complete and so far had turned up no sign of Fossett or his plane.

The Civil Air Patrol suspended its air searches Thursday because of high winds. They were scheduled to resume Friday.
 
Yeah Troy I was kinda thinking this myself. I'm mean what were these folks thinking reporting so late?
 
I wonder if Kathy Bates has him kidnapped and locked in her bedroom?
 
The mtns up around Sonora Pass (Hwy 108) are pretty rugged. I'm from the Ebbetts Pass (Hwy 4) area, which is the next pass to the North of Sonora Pass. The whole area up there is canyons, rocks and dense forest in parts. The elevations range from 6000' in the canyons, to over 11000' at the peaks.

Where the Western side of the Sierras are relatively populated, the Eastern side is considerably less populated. There are large tracts of USFS Designated Wilderness, Primitive Areas, and mostly empty National Forest.

Getting lost in the area between Yosemite and Lake Tahoe is not a pleasant thought. I have hiked and fought fires all through that area, and it is very tough terrain. Much of it is completely inaccessible, except by helicopter.

Beautiful from the air, terrifying from the ground!
 
Meantime, authorities ruled out the possibility that one of the pilots of an old plane wreck found in Nevada was Charles Ogle, who vanished after taking off from Oakland, the Chronicle reported.

Searchers dated the crash from 1961, three years before Ogle was reported missing.

Wow, that just goes to show how long you could be lost....
 
Here is a very interesting blog post, with screen shots, of how the searchers are using the hits internet users have identified from MTurk to help find Fossett.

Also, the SteveFossett.com site says that Amazon has uploaded new, even higher resolution satellite images and new swaths.

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2007/09/update-on-the-s.html

ge-details.jpg


ruler.jpg
 
Latest update: New images with SIX INCHES PER PIXEL resolution (previous images were 1 meter) to be used to try to find Steve Fossett.

www.SteveFossett.com said:
Airborne search from Flying M Ranch extended with new high-resolution imaging to begin Sunday

Team hopeful that new high-resolution images will reveal whereabouts of Steve's aircraft

Computer analysis and anomaly search techniques being employed

Update 19 October 2007, Nevada USA: As early winter weather begins to descend on the rugged high country of northwestern Nevada, the search for aviator Steve Fossett, missing since September 3rd, continues from the Flying M Ranch (near Yearington, NV) with an important extension to the privately funded and directed effort planned for the coming week. This will include the use of high altitude digital mapping technology linked with computer analysis and anomaly search techniques.

Rotary and fixed wing aircraft as well as ground personnel are still in place to run down leads and theories as they emerge. And although visual, infrared and hyper-spectral analysis of large areas have all generated specific leads over the past 6 weeks (as have radar trace and satellite image analyses), all have so far failed to reveal any sign of Steve's Bellanca Super Decathlon single-engine aircraft. Additionally, side scan sonar searches of the several area lakes have now been completed.

While satellite generated images such as those from Google Earth (at a resolution up to 1 meter pixel size) are well able to see an intact aircraft (or large aircraft sections / elements), the members of the ranch-based search team are now looking to analyze much higher resolution images, potentially revealing debris or a forced landing / crash site. Using a dedicated jet aircraft, the High Altitude Mapping Missions (HAMM) photography expected to begin this Sunday (21 October) will generate an image with a pixel size of 6 inches (approx 15 cms), many times more detailed than standard satellite images.

Flying at approximately 20,000 feet AGL over the mountainous terrain, the HAMM aircraft will photograph 800 sq. miles per hour or about 2000 sq. miles per day. Limiting factors will be essentially seasonal ones: increased cloud cover and low solar angle - with the sun getting lower in the sky every day. However, searchers believe that weather will be favorable from Sunday through Friday next week.

Initial missions are planned for the Sierra Nevada and White Mountain areas as winter snows will cover them first. Then the mapping will move to lower ground south of the ranch and east of the Sierra Nevadas, including into Death Valley and the Owens River valley along Highway 395. Mission flight paths are being determined by analysis of a Geographical Information System (GIS) map incorporating all known GPS traces from the aircraft involved in the private part of the search, plus data received from the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), Army and Air National Guard and US Air Force search efforts.

Analysis of the HAMM data will be done initially by Fireball International via a network of computers, with anomalies to be sorted by shape (searching for straight lines, etc), color (especially the bright blue part of the aircraft's fabric cover) and reflection / shine - or a combination of any and all these elements. Then SAR experienced personnel will review these leads to prioritize further - with helicopter, fixed wing and ground assets available to be mobilized to get eyes on each potential target.
 
Latest update: New images with SIX INCHES PER PIXEL resolution (previous images were 1 meter) to be used to try to find Steve Fossett.
Any ideas if these images will be fed to the Amazon Mechanical Turk for distributed searching? Probably too much data to work well on mturk, but it might be worthwhile.

That is some really desolate country. Flew through Yerington (and other parts of Nevada) on Saturday and the area around there is pretty rugged -- very much like what you see on the Google Earth images. The FBO in Eureka had pictures they took with Fossett in April and a signed copy of his book -- he'd been on another scouting trip and stopped in. Really sad. :(
 
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I'm wondering if after this, they'll spread out to doing this nationwide to try to find any other lost aircraft. Would be a nice end to a sad chapter in those families lives.
 
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