Georgia: Search for missionary pilot continues

News of a mysterious radio transmission heard three days after the plane of a missionary pilot went down in the jungles of Venezuela has stirred hope for friends searching for him.

Bob Edwards, an engineer with Roper Corp. in LaFayette, Ga., has just returned from searching for Bob Norton.

He said radio operators in Venezuela told him they had received a weak, six-second transmission from the jungle three days after Mr. Norton’s plane went down. Operators told him they recognized English words and got the general direction of the signal, but did not know what was said.

Mr. Norton, an Adventist Medical Aviation pilot from Jackson County, Ala., and six other people in his plane last were heard from Feb. 16. Mission group officials said the group was near the Gran Sabana area on the border of Venezuela and Brazil.

“If that was them three days after the crash, that’s definitely a good sign,” Mr. Edwards, a native of McMinnville, Tenn., said.

He has continued to be hopeful.

“There’s more than one (missing pilot) that has come out months later,” said Mr. Edwards.

He and a group of Mr. Norton’s friends across the country have been combing satellite images of the area where the plane is thought to have gone down.

Mr. Edwards and Robbie Norton, the missing pilot’s son, spent last week in Venezuela checking out several “points of interest” the volunteers had identified from the satellite images, but did not find any signs of the plane or its occupants.

Mr. Edwards said they learned from witnesses that the plane circled three times at the beginning of the trip to gain altitude. Subtracting the time spent circling from the plane’s expected route and factoring in the direction of the transmission gives the volunteers a new area to search.

“It’s like all the pieces of the puzzle seem like they’re coming together,” Mr. Edwards said.