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I have been looking at this for a while tonight trying to make sense of what Boychuk was seeing and what he was trying to do. I have flown the 172 on numerous cross country flights and it is an easy airplane to fly and navigate in VFR conditions.

The email from Jon only adds to my confusion about this flight. The statement that he was possibly seen flying low level near Lytton over the Fraser river heading south could mean any number of things. Low level in an ambiguous term and could mean anything from 50 ft AGL (above ground level) to 500 ft AGL or something above that.

Heading south at that point runs counter to the theory that he was making a direct flight to his destination because his approximate heading would have to be about 240-250 degrees magnetic, not 180 degrees. Heading south could indicate that he was going to follow highway #1. Would this be the VFR route that Jon is referring ?

When Jon says “the military was going off a radar hit near Spense Bridge,” is this the antecedent to the purported position report over Spense Bridge? “We believe that he usually took the VFR route”. What exactly is the usual VFR route?

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I don't know much about flying and there are reasons why I'm letting Supersquint and Greg head up intel and information gathering.

But to me if I look at this search effort in its entirety, I have to think that there must be reasons why Ron Boychuk (and Steve Fossett for that matter) have not been found despite MASSIVE search efforts. What seems to be most logical to me is that the pilot did something unexpected and that the search teams were looking in totally the wrong area. If the SAR team had the radar track and other information that lead them to believe that Ron Boychuk had passed by Spense Bridge, I would have to assume that they dedicated a lot of resources to the area of the last known reports and radar track.

What Greg will have to answer for us is how reliable the basic information we are working with is. Could another plane and another pilot's communication gotten confused for Ron Boychuk? I don't know the answer to any of this and am waiting for what Greg determines.

My point is that if a massive search effort is undertaken and the pilot is not found, then why was this? Greg's answers will be very important, to our greater understanding of what happened, but if we are working with the same information that the search team is working with we could be drawn to the same conclusions as them. Maybe the conclusions are incorrect based simply on the fact that they have not yielded the location of Ron Boychuk's plane. Maybe unorthodox search methods are required and/or maybe we just have to do a brute force imagery review of the entire possible flight area (even those areas that don't seem probable).

Again I don't have any answers, I'm just pondering questions out loud while I wake up and get my day started.

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InternetSAR.org: Volunteers collaboratively analyzing aerial and satellite imagery to assist in search and rescue efforts.
DISCUSS ACTIVE SEARCHES: Ron Boychuk in British Columbia, Canada & Steve Fossett in Nevada, USA

My blog posts on my MTurk search experience:
Using the Internet to Revolutionize Search and Rescue
Internet search for Steve Fossett eight weeks later

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