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Fossett search enters day 3
2007-09-06
Air crews began their third full day searching for missing U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett on Thursday after coming up with no clues despite an all-night mission by a plane carrying infrared equipment. The 63-year-old millionaire and aviation record-setter disappeared after setting off in a plane on Monday from an airfield on hotel magnate William Barron Hilton's Flying M Ranch, roughly 80 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada. No locater signals or emergency beacons have been spotted from Fossett in the 600-square-mile (1,600-sq-km) area of desert and mountains where he is thought to have disappeared while scouting dry lake beds for a planned attempt to set a land speed record. Authorities said a C-130 aircraft carrying infrared equipment had searched the area through the night. Ten planes took off at dawn on Thursday to resume the full scale search. Searchers are using several planes, including one with imaging technology that quickly distinguishes man-made objects, including aircraft wreckage, from natural objects as they look for Fossett, who in 2002 became the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world. Rescuers have looked in vain for signs or signals from Fossett's plane in the Nevada desert and mountains, which rise up to 10,000 feet and are buffeted by blustery cross winds. Nothing has been heard from a sophisticated watch that Fossett is known to wear that is designed to let pilots signal their location in an emergency. A sighting on Wednesday proved to be an old airplane wreck, rather than the Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon that Fossett flew, Nevada's Civil Air Patrol said. British billionaire Richard Branson, who has teamed with Fossett on several aviation adventures and who underwrote his record-setting solo non-stop airplane flight around the world in 2005, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday he was optimistic Fossett was alive but that he was concerned. "He's not only the greatest aviator in the world, he's also the greatest gliding pilot in the world," Branson said. He added that he had tried to find Fossett using satellite mapping from Internet search company Google Inc. Fossett, who earned his fortune as a financial trader, was piloting a plane capable of aerobatics with enough fuel for four or five hours of flight.
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