Pending Review
Man and Machine: Doomed to Disaster
Ever been too excited by a new toy to wait and play with it?
One US man was. After buying an unregistered homebuilt aircraft, and spending a month fixing it up, he soon tired of taxiing it around his trailer park home. He had no licence, and no logbook of any flight experience was ever found, but that wasn't going to stop him.
After taking off from a field, the ambitious amateur pilot managed a good thirty minutes before hitting trees and diving fatally to the ground.
He was so hopelessly unprepared for the flight the National Transportation Safety Board noted his "decision to make the flight" was the reason for his downfall, but not the only one. Witnesses and a video showed he had made a low pass over the field, his attention turned to onlookers as he triumphantly waved to them. It was only at the end of this long low sweep that he found himself barrelling at speed towards the line of trees.
The board found that, in addition to being doomed to disaster the moment his beloved machine left terra firma, his failure to keep away from the trees while playing at low height was behind the accident.
https://generalaviationnews.com/2015/02/19/non-rated-pilot-crashes-dies/
The news site's link to the NTSB report is dead but I found it:
https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/86238/pdf
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?ProjectID=86238
Final link is the investigative info docket, some pics of the wreckage and witness statements and whatnot.
Submitted on 02/23/2021
Submitted by:
Iona Macdonald
Reference:
General Aviation News, NTSB records