As I said before, that day was so windy in gusts that a light plane in the wrong place at the wrong time could have been picked up, turned over, and slammed into the ground so hard it's not recognizable as a plane. Or thrown sideways into a valley wall. Somehow even the blue color isn't turning up.

(I'm wondering why they can't take a spectrum of the blue paint with which the plane was painted and then have a sensor simply look for that particular spectrum. It's not as though they're looking for brown, tan and light yellow. Fly very high, cover a large area at different times of the day to get different light exposures. I'm sure there's a good reason.)

It seems quite apparent that he hit hard enough to disable both the planes' Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) and his own personal ELT. That's hard.

And, hope springs eternal.

"Lyon County Sheriff Allen Veil, whose county includes Hilton's ranch, said he's observed the private search and has seen "a sense of optimism that Mr. Fossett is still out there alive, and they're set on finding him."

Arf