World aviation record holder Stephen Fossett is missing and a massive search is under way in western Nevada, a Nevada aviation spokeswoman said today.
Fossett took off from a private air strip known as Flying M Ranch, 30 miles south of Yerington, Nevada, at about 6 p.m. local time Monday, with enough fuel for four to five hours of flight, according to the Civil Air Patrol.
Searchers are looking for world aviation record holder Steve Fossett, who was reported missing Monday night.
Fossett, 63, was last seen taking off from the Hilton Ranch south of Smith Valley in a single engine Citabria Super Decathlon heading south.
Hope he's just taking a break somewhere. CNN has a picture of where he took off and a video at the link below. If you have no idea who he is, basically he's a record setter, and quite a prolific one at that.
He's credited with 115 world records or world firsts, and holds official world records in five sports, according to his Web site.
Read a quick profile of him at CNN.
Update: Help in the search via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Think of it as "many hands make light work". There are too many satellite images (of areas where he might be) for a single person to view, so by dividing up the work, each person contributes a little to make a big whole.
[Source: CNN, Record-Courier]