Warbird Information Exchange

Did Steve Fossett ever own any warbirds?

Seems likely after 5days he maybe dead i thinking.. ironic not the balloons or the high altitude jet glider but a small propeller plane that may kill him...

Always the way it seems.. always the unexpected aircraft spectrum.

But he did risk himself by not filing a flightplan. All this has done now is cause serious headaches for the searchers, where as if he had filed a vague track they know where to look....

Whenever i fly regardless i always file a flightplan.

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Fighters pilots are born to make movies , bomber pilots make HISTORY, cargo crews haul their material and fame.

And i always carry survival gear - in a SRU-21P USAF /ARMY vest.

I carry PRC-90 us military radio, a EPRIB beacon, torches, foil sheet, matches, flares, knife, food, water, mirror and over the top a LPU - life preserver vest if incase i go swimming somewhere. Medical packages also.

I value my life and if i ever crash darn if i aint gona be prepared.

Now if Steve had this gear we may of heard from him now... then again he could of had a heart attack etc at the control..

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Fighters pilots are born to make movies , bomber pilots make HISTORY, cargo crews haul their material and fame.

i'm not writing him off yet, but it's ironic a man of his caliber, expertise & skill would have a mishap in a small private plane. it's like scott crossfield...... same scenario....flew the x-15 balls out, but met his demise in a tame plane.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I've read that Crossfield was killed by ATC, they did not warn him of severe weather. I'll try to find the link to the whole story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01294.html

Still praying for Fossett......

Tom, I disagree with the term "tame plane". If you think ANY AIRPLANE IS TAME, you just have not flown it to its limits.

A Cub will kill you too, it just takes longer.

Well, Sabredriver hit on my theory, Heart Attack. Flying and felt one coming on. Made a safe soft landing and then died from a second one that happened after landing. Maybe he made a radio call and nobody heard it. My bet is on, when they find him, he will be sitting inside or near the intact airplane.

You need to consider 2 other things, if he screwed it into the gound, there would have been an ELT, even if it flipped on landing. If he lived on the ground, we would have heard from him. At least he would have set the desert on fire so he could be found.

I do wish for the best in the outcome.

Mark H

If it was a severe impact and sheared the antenna from the ELT, there would be no signal. Or if it wound up inverted in a canyon chances are there would be no signal. Don't know how fire proof ELT's are.

Steve G

I do not want to divert this from the subject of Steve Fossett and his eventual discovery, hopefully very much alive,
but I just would like to comment on the statement:
"Crossfield was killed by ATC"

( And I know you were merely passing on a story in the news Oscar Deuce)

But to be honest I would never attribute a lack of wx avoidance to ATC.
I fly worldwide, and am based in the Gulf.
We fly many many areas which provide NO wx information, in fact the only place I EVER get severe weather information is the USA, the rest of the world leaves it to us, our radar, and the big windows in the front to see and avoid. best preventive defense is the printed sig charts, although sometimes they are rather behind the actual conditions.
Mr Crossfield had a lifetime of flying behind him, and I am pretty sure that WX info broadcast from ATC was a luxury he only ever received once well into retirement.
It is also no defense to say "well his aircraft was not equipped with WX radar" because again, most radar is relatively useless in the lower levels, at least useless compared to the relative value it provides in the upper FL LVLs.
No, I would say that if Mr Crossfield flew into severe wx, he did it eyes wide open, and avoidance was taken too late.
But either way, whatever the actual reason, I would certainly not place the blame on the shoulders of ATC.
If you would like a graphic display of this, do a trip into lagos, Nigeria sometime when the ITCZ is active, and see just how much help you get from good old lagos ATC ! (I hesitate to even call it control)
my two cents!
Now, back to finding Mr Fossett.

Not one to speculate on such things...so correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't
both ELT's(If he was wearing the Breitling) possibly be destroyed in a fire?
Heart attack....downdraft...who knows...

Good luck Mr. Fossett

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DBF

Mr Crossfield subscribed to XM weather. Don't know if he used it that day. His preflight briefing showed thunder boomers across his path.
I wouldn't go so far as to say ATC killed him, they could have done more, but they didn't kill him. Here's the NTSB report:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 115&akey=1


Steve G

dunno why this is bothering me so much...i dont know the guy or anything but ......
Untill the guy is found dead ...he aint ...
so please less of the doom n gloom .....the man has more outdooor's savvy than most of us .......
thanks

Maybe he doesn't want to be found?

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XM Weather is NO substitute for onboard weather radar !!!!!

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I have more outright survival training (arctic, desert, swamp, mountain, tundra, and several kinds of forest) than most men I know and I wouldn't give myself a tinker's darn with a broken leg. I wouldn't call it doom and gloom to reasonably gauge his chances and hope like hell that he makes it because the odds are simply against him. He's a great pilot, and evidently has some survival training. This is the only reason I am following this story any longer. Anyone else would be dead, almost for sure.


It bugs me he didn't file a flight plan, but there was a reason. He was looking for a new testbed on the salt lakes, so he was wandering around a bit. He should have had survival gear, but may not have. If he did have survival gear, he's likely using it to get back. Stay out of the sun means he's moving at night, which makes it harder to find him. Water will, as always, be his big issue out there, but there are ways.

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

I've been chasing ELT's in CAP for about 10 years now and I've seen a lot of weird things happen with them. Weak/dead batteries would be the most common problem I have run across.

I can think of one crash where the ELT didn't even activate; the impact was so violent that it destroyed the device. ELT's aren't built to the same dimensions as "black boxes".

Along the same line, the Breitling emergency system in his watch is a new one on me. I'm familiar with PLB's (Personal Locator Beacons), which are like ELT's for hikers and the like but how does the Breitling system work?

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ATC: "Oscar 2, cleared to engage wildlife at your discretion..."

At some point you have read and understand what the windshield is telling you about about the weather in front of you. ATC has only three feet to fall, you have a lot more...

Lynn