In article 20040303194733.3b99a3f5@fstop,
R. Hubbell wrote:

An unfortunate end to a plane gone missing:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_ho.../23314333.html

Interesting that they used radar signals to find the crash site.
I thought they would always do that.

Doing a radar analysis to find a crash site isn't as easy as it
sounds. It isn't just replaying the tapes until a plane disappears.

The usual way to do it is to determine when the plane took off,
and start tracking it from the departure airport. Even in the
local area, there will be multiple radars tracking the plane. Over
a longer distance, there are many more radar tapes to to synchronize,
and there isn't 100% radar coverage.

Determining the departure time is sometimes real detective work.
I remember one search ~5years ago. A pilot flying from California
to OSH wasn't reported missing until he didn't return from OSH.
The folks in California thought he was having a good time at OSH,
and his friends at OSH thought he decided not to go. IIRC, he
didn't use credit cards, and refueled at non-towered airports.
After a bunch of interviews with FBOs along the way, he was finally
able to be tracked. The radar tracks showed the plane flying at
11,500ft, and ended at a 12,000ft mountain.

The NTSB number for this accident is SEA98FA161 or follow the link
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...11X10951&key=1

I'm not involved in CAP any more, but the best ways to be found are
in order of chance of success (IMHO):

1. IFR flight plan
2. VFR flight plan with flight following
3. flight following w/o flight plan
4. VFR flight plan
5. informal flight plan with friends/family (indicate route of flight/etc)
6. airband radio in survival gear
7. cell phone
8. land in someone's backyard
9. 406mhz ELT w/ GPS

A 406mhz ELT is much better then 121.5 only ELTs, but is still not
that reliable a way to find a plane. After countless false alarm
searches for 121.5 signals, I consider 121.5 ELTs only to be useful
as expensive ballast. ELTs have a 99%+ false alarm rate (of the
times they go off, over 99% are false alarms), and have a 95%+
failure rate in actual crashes. A sizeable number of the crashes
they do activate in are crashes were no search is needed (land in
someone's field). I don't have current stats, so the numbers above
are a few years old, but have been in that range for years. ELTs
work in such a small number of crashes that it hard to get
statistically significant numbers.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.panix.com/~jac