It is a crisp and cloudless September morning, and I am serving as a “scanner” on this Civil Air Patrol flight. The job is painful: With my face smushed against the rear starboard window, I squint through the blinding morning sun to scrutinize a jumble of craggy peaks, badlands, arroyos, and withering scrub. Ryan points out Mount Grant, an 11,500-foot-high monolith at 10 o’clock, just as the pilot rolls us sideways to avoid hitting it. “That’s one son-of-a-gun to search because it’s so rugged,” she says.
After millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett and his airplane went missing in Nevada on September 3, 2007, it was the Civil Air Patrol that led the search for him. When I arranged to join the hunt, Ryan, 54, a CAP information officer, insisted I wear one of those motion-sickness medication patches you stick behind your ear. I’ve been jostled in jetliners above South Pacific typhoons and have roller-coastered over Alaska in brittle Beavers, and I have never once been airsick. But I’m glad I took her advice, because the pilot of our turbo-charged Cessna 182, Ryan’s husband Ron, 76, has just made his umpteenth turn 1,000 feet above a cluster of mangy hills that look like crumpled paper grocery bags, and despite my patch, I’m beginning to feel woozy.
Air & Space Magazine: Anatomy of a Search
:: The article's subhead, "Why the U.S. Civil Air Patrol couldn’t find Steve Fossett," struck me as bit inflammatory... but once I dug in a bit, it turns out to be a fair piece.
I'm going to go find myself a print copy of the magazine. It should be a keeper.
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