I am flying to Reno later this morning... I will route my flight so that I go over the Burning Man airport location and then west some. I'll fly low over the ridges and look as much as I can.
I was at Burning Man all week and had unicom duty the early morning of the 31st and also flew several times that day, but have I have no recollection of a Super Cub overflying the area.
Does anyone know what type of navigation equipment he used... that is, did he use VOR's or go GPS direct , for example. That might help narrow the search corridors... I imagine the CAP has done all that, but if you have any further info let me know, I'll fly back that way on Monday.
Blue skies to you, Bob

That is tough. I know they suspended the search at the request of the family, not sure if it was because of the cost or what. The CAP did 45,000 sq miles in the area from here to the Oregon border. One would need to find out the search pattern that has already been executed before they take off aimlessly.

As a pilot that has been involved in previous search & rescues I can tell you there are many difficulties in finding small aircraft like the Super Cub.

For one thing the C.A.P. has very strict rules governing it's pilots when flying search grids. The one I liked least was a restriction on flight altitudes during searches which was a minimum of 500' AGL. You can't see broken tree tops, scarring or even wreckage out in the open at that altitude in varying conditions. For this reason I wouldn't be to concerned about re-flying grids the C.A.P. has already covered.

From my experiences in searches I would concentrate my efforts in a ten mile radius around their last departure point of Jackpot, Nevada. After thoroughly covering that area to my satisfaction I would plot their course from Jackpot to their home field destination and find the highest terrain on that course and again fly a concentrated search of 10 nautical around this area. The same could be done for a course from Jackpot to Burning Man.

If they crashed, chances are they will be found in one of these areas. On the other hand the aircraft was equipped for off field landings. Could of been that one of them needed a bathroom break and he tried landing in an open area somewhere and botched it. Remember one such incident where this exact thing happened when a pilot tried to land in a dry akaline reservoir bed. The aircraft ended up on it's back and it blended in perfectly with the white akali. If you didn't know where to look you would never see it.

For someone to take off aimlessly searching with no training or planning can turn good intentions into another casualty.

It is very hard to understand the reasoning behind the folks at Supercub.org. Someone can mention a fly-in somewhere and seventy or so members will take off work, spend hundreds of dollars in expenses just to arrive and drink beer. Mention a downed aircraft (Super Cub) in need of rescue and it falls on deaf ears with only one pilot offering help. A pitiful lot that bunch.

I challenge that organization to immediately gather for a fly-in at Jackpot, Nevada and contribute their time and bush aircraft for something worthwhile this time.....a search for one of their own, that could mean the difference between life and death for this father & daughter.

The C.A.P. has abandoned this search which has opened the door for volunteers to take up where they left off. They are predicting possible snow in the higher elevations next week. The time to act is now.

A link to this thread should be posted on their site.

On my way to Reno, the place I wanted to look was some ridges just east of the Black Rock where I've seen wild sheep on a regular basis... and also experienced some bad turbulance... it was just a hunch... if they spoted the sheep they might have tried to get a better view. Since no one has any recollection of the plane getting to Burning Man... Supercubber has the right idea for searching. Alas, I didn't spot anything. I am going to look again on my back this afternoon, it's not much out of my way and the Sun will be at a different angle.
Bob

Bob,

The news was reporting a week signal that briefly came from the Battle Mountain Area.

Good Luck and Gods Speed.

I landed back at TTD at dusk. I again made several passes over the mountains, east of the the Black Rock desert, near ROBUD intersection... where I had seen sheep durning Burning Man. Nada... didn't even see the sheep this time. Dang, it is hard to look carefully flying by yourself... you just can't really concentrate. Even the sage is four or five feet high... and could hide a fleet of crumbled planes. While I was looking, I wondered if one of those aerial metal dectectors, (Magentic Anomaly Detector) like the Navy uses for submarines would work?
That is news to me the an ELT signal had been recieved near Battle Mt... but certainly makes sense based on the other infromation. As I wondered in my previous post, it would help to know if he used a GPS and flew a (fairly) direct course, or not.
It is a sadness that there is no answer to what happened. Deer season starts soon and maybe someone will stumble into the wreakage. If a new aerial serch is organized, I will try to fly down and help.
Bob

The report of a faint signal couldn't be verified as coming from a creditable source. As with all searches that drag on for awhile you start hearing all kinds of stories.

An aircraft went missing here with a pilot and game biologist several years ago. Extensive search. People swore they seen it flying here or there and some said they heard it crash into a lake etc. Couple of years later they found the aircraft 100 or so yards behind an outfitters camp when a hunter took a walk through the woods and found pieces of plexiglass.

The information I have been able to find reinforces my belief that they didn't get that far from Jackpot (but I've been wrong before). They were obviously heavy with a full load of fuel along with their other items. It was reported when they departed Jackpot the winds were gusting to 35 mph. Heavily loaded, high winds and trying to cross the leeward side of the mountains is not a good mix. 30-35 miles from Jackpot they had some pretty serious mountains to navigate whether they deviated to Burning Man or not, called the Matterhorns which reach upwards to 11,000 feet (see map, you'll have to click on pic to enlarge).

Scouring the leeward side of these ridges would probably be as good a bet as any.

http://www.backcountrypilot.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=random&cat=10169&pos=-885

http://www.napanews.com/templates/index.cfm?template=story_full&id=8A091A30-D5FE-412A-B2AC-D4F1FB45D716

I will be flying to Denio Jct and back (from Columbia O22) in the next couple of weeks and will certainly keep a sharp eye out. My course will be sorta' through the middle of the triangle.

I just got back from a flight from O52 to Denio with a couple of hunters looking-nada. I'll keep looking.