Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990                   TAG: 9003182474
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KY. PLANE SOUGHT IN BEDFORD

A college student who recently learned to fly, Kevin Calloway, and his brother, Duwayne Douglas Calloway, never filed a flight plan before taking off from an airport at Prestonsburg, Ky., about 5:30 p.m. Friday. The flight to Lynchburg should have taken about 2 1/2 hours.

The search began Saturday morning when Kevin Calloway, 22, failed to report for work.

Maj. F. Joseph Copenhaver, mission coordinator for the Civil Air Patrol, said three ground teams and one airplane were searching the county after detecting an electronic signal from an emergency transmitter. The signal appears to be stationary, he said.

Copenhaver said some of the search teams were looking in the area of the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Peaks of Otter.

"We still have a couple of teams clawing their way up the mountainside. They're working in rough terrain," Copenhaver said.

Copenhaver, who lives in Marion, was alerted to the possibility of a downed aircraft at 2:25 a.m. Saturday.

During the day, three aircraft, 19 ground vehicles and about 50 people searched a region west to Bluefield, W.Va, east past Lynchburg, north to Covington and south past Roanoke.

"The weather has been very poor today," Copenhaver said. "We have done most of the searching on the ground."

Thunderstorms and cloudy skies inundated the area Friday night and Saturday.

Copenhaver said he plans to have all 11 Civil Air Patrol planes in the air today out of the Roanoke airport if the plane is not found and the weather permits.

Because officials were unclear what route the plane took to Lynchburg, it was difficult for them to pin down the search area. A normal flight would have taken the brothers across southern West Virginia.

"He filed no flight plan, so we don't know where he crossed the state line," Copenhaver said.

West Virginia State Trooper Gary Tincher said the Princeton state police detachment received a report of an aircraft emergency locator signal in the area but said no plane was found.

Kevin Calloway had been trained on radar but was not rated to fly via instruments. The student had called a Kentucky flight station to check weather conditions and had been advised not to fly.

The Associated Press contributed information to this story.