ON Ramp:

Everything is a point of view. Consider the following:

Two men looked through prison bars

One saw mud

The other stars.

Wish evil to no one. It will come back to bite you in the a$$.

Should I hate those who took Kathryn? What good would it do? It would eat me up from the inside out. And that is what you are doing to yourself. Anger is unproductive, but you can channel your feelings into something good but it takes a lot of work. I can think of no one in this world that I wish harm to. Sometimes it isn't easy but the alternative diminishes me and makes me less noble.

Talk to someone. Get some balance in your life. Please.

I thought jealousy was one of the seven deadly sins? This idiot has tons of it, if there's a hell, maybe he'll burn there. Soon.

Now, race comes in: "rich white man".

Sad, sad person. You really are showing many signs of needing professional help. Hope you get it and soon...

I would love too work in one of his "sweatshops".

C'mon, surely someone here must share On-ramp's envy, jealousy and bitterness toward successful people. On-ramp, have you hated every boss you've ever had? Has a poor person ever signed your paycheck? Have you intentionally remained on the lower rungs of the economic ladder because your conscience would kill you if you rose to mid or senior level management? Would you pay your own employees more than you paid yourself?

Well, I'm pretty new here-

[I'm a refugee; RANDY over at another website banned me after I posted a video link to a soldiers' funeral in Central Texas. In my opinion, Randy is an assh*le. I look forward to telling him this in person next month in Los Angeles]

But I have a bad history. In any case, Steve Fosset is still a billionaire climbing rocks trying to find a road; I'm sure he's alive, and I would love to be the first person to hand him a bottled water [or a beer] when he emerges from the wilderness.

-the long and short: The fact he hasn't contacted anyone this far is really bad. I suspect that his aircraft's collision with the stumps and rocks probably means that he is done.

I've been wrong before-

I just hope the man is still alive. Perishing in the desert would be a horrible way for anyone to die.

Onramp is a jealous and pathetic douchebag, who will never pass up an opportunity to bring down a man whose success amplifies his own mediocrity.

I admire fossett, he's living a full life and every day when I check the internet I think to my self, "Hang in there fossett"

As my father-in-law says: " you can either sit on the sidelines or get in the game"

Okay, enough already. onramp made an insensitive and stupid comment, doesn't mean he's a permanent dick. We've all made insensitive and stupid comments before, some of us right here on PPOT while others were lucky enough to make them in private or (best of all) under our breath.

Now, I am interested in knowledgeable folks' comments on the search for Mr. Fossett. What do you think happened to him? What are the odds he is alive?

I am thinking that, given his radio gear, his emergency beacon, the ability to light a signal fire or even burn a seat from his plane - or the whole plane, I guess - to generate smoke, the only way he hasn't attracted searchers' attention by now is if he is incapacitated. Would being incapacitated for a week in the Nevada desert imply being deceased?

While I'm here feeling all this love - let's hear from some of you pilots. The engine failure thing is one theory, but what about winds, thermals, box canyons, etc??????

What's your thoughts on the cause of him going down?????

Pilot/friend speculated that a sudden catastrophic health event. (ie heart attack or stroke)

I kind of agree. That plane should have turned into a glider if the engine quit. Only other thing is maybe there was some sort of structural failure and the plane just dropped.

Dave

Two problems here. The plane was equipped with an ELT, the emergency beacon that should (I say should, they do not always work) have activated upon impact. Second is that he evidently had a Breitling ELT watch that has the same type of emergency beacon inside and when activated signals for help.

Heart attack and airplane crashes should equal the airplane ELT going off. Accident and his being down should equal him manually activating the watch ELT or the airplane ELT. One of the two should have triggered by now.

By this time his chances of survival are getting very slim. Should the watch ELT be defective and his being trapped in the wreckage of a plane, he has only a day or two to survive without water.

He was supposed to be out scouting for places to do a high speed run, smooth playa's and such and not mountainous areas.

Hope they find him and soon.

My dad has the ELT rewired to the instrument panel, so that he can turn it on if he is going down. To manually turn on the ELT, one has to be able to get to the switch - in the back of the plane. The ELT can be destroyed, if the impact is severe enough or, like Joe said, it can malfunction.

Dave

I say medical catastrophe in flight and/or very hard impact with terrain (hard enough to destroy elt rather than activating it). I can't imagine a scenario where he simply made an off airport controlled landing because he would be the type to know how to generate a signal with the aircraft radio or the ELT if he was alive and stranded.

I haven't seen or read anything about the history of the aircraft other than it was a Bellanca Decathlon, aerobatic aircraft. (How many hours on the airframe, or if it was ever damaged) If it had been flown in aerobatics it could possibly have been overstressed at some prior time and experienced a catastrophic structural failure while Fossett was flying it. Has anyone seen a picture that shows the tail number of the aircraft?

I think a sudden health issue, as Joe and Tim suggested, is by far the most possible scenario. Sudden structural failure is very rare, especially in a flying rollcage like the Decathalon. That's a tough airplane. In the event of a mechanical failure, it also would have been easy to put down in the desert, especially for an experienced pilot. I just can't imagine that he is alive, he would have figured out some way to signal for help by now, as resourceful as he is.

I agree structural failure is a long shot but in an aerobatic plane, it certainly should be considered. If the aircraft had some harsh treatment by another pilot or damage history, it would be good to know. That kind of damage is not always visible from a walk around inspection.

Maybe he was tired of the rat race and got outta here. Now he's on a beach somewhere drinking a cocktail.

A nice thought - but unlikely. He wasn't exactly in the rat race.