Joe, the missing pilot, is a coworker. He is still missing and there have been no updates on the search or further information on the situation.
My personal opinion is that his plane went down shortly after refueling at the airport near the entrance of the GC park on Friday, just 30 miles from GC Village and the airport. I say that because after reading the story and researching ELT units I believe Joe's was an older unit that is no longer satellite monitered. Duration of transmission is 12-48 hours on them, I'm guessing that's due to battery life. The signal is only picked up by ground units and passing aircraft, if I remember correctly it's distance is approximately 12 miles. Another plane picked up the signal on Sunday, reported it, and by the time SAR got to the area the signal was gone. I'm assuming the battery life had run out and it was no longer transmitting after two days. Bad timing I guess.
Why didn't another aircraft pick up the signal on Friday or Saturday? I don't know. There is a lot of aircraft activity in the area especially on weekends but I'm not sure about the equipment used to receive the signal. Are all aircraft equipped and/or monitoring? Don't know. The likelyhood of that signal being from Joe's plane is fairly high as there are no other reports of missing aircraft in that area for that time period. On another forum it was stated there was a dog on board with Joe. He volunteered to fly to other states and pick up dogs that were in line to be euthanized and bring them back to AZ for rescue. Someone on that forum said he already had picked up a dog but there are no official statements that he ever arrived at his destination. Officially, he was just past his scheduled return home time.
We fear the worst in this situation but if there was ever a guy that could survive with tremendous odds against him... it would be Joe.
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