The search for Steve Fossett

I can't resist. There is something about me that connects on an emotional level with Steve Fossett. Maybe it is the fact that he's run an Ironman and all the aviation records. This appeals to me. I've been watching the news every couple hours to see if they had found him or if there was any news. I felt like the CAP and the authorities have been doing all they could but then I got some information from a friend which alarmed me. He had heard that Steve Fossett had been planning to break the land speed record and he was thinking of doing it in the Diamond Valley lakebed in Nevada. There was a possibility that he might have been heading there when he left the Hilton's ranch. This is the Reno Gazette Journal's map of the search area as of earlier this week. They have since expanded the search area some but they are still staying West of Austin Nevada.

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Believing that he might be heading toward the dry lake bed I prepared this map:

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The blue line is the direct path from the Hilton's ranch to the dry lake bed. The green line is the line that I would have likely taken there if I had been flying. I believe that the visuals and the way that it looked on the sectional chart would have led me to fly up the Big Smoky Valley to highway 50. In particular, the mountain in front of me would have likely turned north at that point rather than continuing to the Monitor Valley.

The red line is the line that I would have likely have taken back. Seeing Hickison Summit in front of me as I tracked North of Highway 50 would have inspired me to turn south down the Monitor Valley rather than doing the goose kneck back to the Big Smoky Valley.

The blue box to the southeast of Eureka is the unconfirmed location a Geologist who thought he heard a plane in distress. He reported hearing frequent changes in the plane's engine RPMs at about 11:48am on the day that Fossett was missing. This report has not been confirmed and hasn't been used by the CAP in determining the search area because they have reason to believe that Steve Fossett wasn't intending to go to the Diamond Valley dry lake bed.

Many of the ranches marked on the map do not appear in the current Satellite imagery on google. I guess that they have been abandoned. However, if I was a downed aviator I might head for one of them.

There are some ranches that appear to still be functional, in particular I wonder if anyone has talked to the residents of the Dias ranch to find out if they were around on Monday and if they heard anything. The Butler ranch and the Willow Creek ranch might also still be active and it might be worth talking to the people there.

In the desert your survival priorities are:

1. Take care of critical injuries


2. Don't die of exposure


3. Find water

Finding food is way down your survival priority list. So I charted some bigger watering holes.

I think it is fair to assume that something didn't go as planned because he didn't return. So even if we do assume that he didn't intend to go very far as the CAP believes, that doesn't necessarily mean that along the way something didn't go as expected which would lead him further away from where he intended to go. So it isn't necessarily a perfect assumption that he is within the range of where he thought he would go. As we pilot's know, sometimes the flight plan goes out the window when you get up in the air. His intentions might be a good first cut but something might have happened which led him away from where he was intending to go.

I started out plotting out the speed and distances on the my aviation charts. (I wish google maps would allow you to make a circle of an arbitrary diameter.) The Citabria goes about 105kts and so I was thinking how far could he go if he was planning to get back by noon as reported and he left at 9am. Quick estimate ~180 statute miles. If he went up the Big Smoky Valley path that I plotted that would get him almost to highway 50 before he had to turn around. If he went up the Monitor Valley then that would put him just south of Potts.

The other thing that I noticed is that of all the airports in the vicinity Eureka is the only one that has repair service. So if he had powerplant problems as could be inferred from the geologist's report, then if you had a AFD then you would be inclined to head for an airport where they could do something to repair your plane. Presumably if he was interested in using the Diamond Valley Lake bed for his speed record he was familiar with Eureka and its airport. Also you would be inclined to fly along roads, through valleys and near roads and not over moutains, ridges, and over forests.

This is a stretch hypothesis, but imagine he had a minor problem and decided to take the plane to get repaired at the closest airport that could do anything Eureka, then the problem got worse and his flight ended. There are a couple of interesting observations in one of my favorite books, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why. One is that people head toward the familiar when stressed. If he was familiar with Eureka's facilities he might have headed there.

Another observation is that people who have survived difficult situations before often times get themselves in over their heads again because their experience has incorrectly taught them that they can handle situations like this. Internally they attribute their survival to something that they did when in fact they were simply lucky. Though luck favors the prepared, a lot of times the reason certain people survive and others don't is that they were just lucky. This propensity to get yourself in over your head commonly has been documented to affect guides and expert outdoorsmen. I expect that great pilots also might also have the affliction. (Note to self.)

Then there is the time. The geologist report is 11:48. I've think that I heard that left at about 9am. That would mean about 2 hrs and 48min. If he were flying up one of those valleys then why did it take him so long to get there. It is about 200 statute miles to highway 50 along the slightly longer Monitor Valley route. That implies an average ground speed of only 68kts.This could be easily explained at least 3 ways:

1. Headwinds. Didn't someone say the wind was westerly that day.
2. Powerplant problems reducing performance
3. Indirect routing or lingering enroute.

This flight as a joy ride, was arguably destinationless. This makes it harder for CAP because the normal rules of route tracking don't apply. He could literally be anywhere within the range of the airplane. The fact that he didn't come back is direct evidence that the flight didn't go as he had intended. So looking where he intended to go might not be the "right" strategy. In short, I'm worried that the reason that they haven't found Steve Fossett yet is that they are looking in the wrong place.