For more than a year, Big Island resident Dave Bigelow made plans for the moment wind and weather conditions would allow him to sail his glider at 40,000 feet.

On Friday, he believed that day had come.

“;It was probably the most perfect day and he was just bouncing with excitement,”; said his friend and fellow glider pilot Woodson Woods. “;He said, 'this is the big one.' He was always going to go up to 40,000 feet.”;

Bigelow was towed into the air in his single-seat Glaser-Dirks DG-400 glider from the Waimea-Kohala Airport and radioed his friends shortly before 1 p.m.

“;I'm at 28,000-feet and I'm going over to Mauna Loa to catch the Mauna Loa wave,”; he said to Woods, referring to an updraft above the volcano well-known to glider pilots.

Friends never heard from him again and reported him missing that evening at 6:20 p.m.

Searchers found what appeared to be glider wreckage at the 7,800-foot altitude on the side of Mauna Loa at 1:06 p.m. yesterday, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.

But the high winds prevented them from reaching the site to confirm it was Bigelow's glider.

“;It may or may not be until we get some confirmation,”; said Big Island Battalion Chief Raymond Rowe. “;There's a lot of debris on our mountains from old crashes way back. What this one is has to be determined by putting somebody on the ground.”;

The debris was located within Volcanoes National Park, he said. Rescuers will try to drop search crews at the site this morning, Rowe said.

Bigelow, a retired Air Force captain who flew F-102 fighter jets in Vietnam, had been researching his routes and testing his equipment for a year to prepare for the record-setting flight, friends said.

“;He was just very well-prepared in anything he did,”; said Woods, president of the Mauna Kea Soaring club, of which Bigelow is a member. “;It's just a mystery to us. As a pilot, what we call a good stick, he was one of the best.”;

Bigelow had broken the state's high altitude record for a glider set by Woods back in 1969. In that flight last April, he sailed without engine power at 33,500 feet, higher than Mauna Kea. Bigelow posted online a video of his record-breaking flight in which he is seen scraping ice off the inside of his cockpit with a credit card.

After serving eight years in the Air Force, Bigelow worked as a commercial pilot for Continental Airlines and later Aloha Airlines. Bigelow, known as “;father bird”; by his wife, had been flying gliders since the late 1970s, taking his two sons and wife on flights from Dillingham Airfield in Mokuleia, son Dan Bigelow said. His father moved to the Big Island after retiring.

Bigelow also built his own ultralight planes and flew his DG-400 glider almost every week, his son said.

Bigelow said his father compared big-mountain wave riding to surfers searching for the world's biggest ocean waves.

“;He could tell like a good sailor or a surfer (when) the good surf conditions come together,”; he said.

Dan Bigelow left his Maui home yesterday to help with the search and join his mother on the Big Island.

“;We're aware of the possibility, but optimistic,”; he said. “;We're nervous.”;

Anyone with information about Bigelow's whereabouts or who saw his glider in the air is asked to call the joint command center at 535-3333.