2 die in RV 6 crash~wing comes off in flight PICTURES

[ussyorktown]

http://www.kgw.com/ Reporter, "I was told that a certain type of RVs are known for having their wings torn off." (news to me!)
ALBANY Oregon -- A small plane crashed into a field east of Albany late Monday afternoon when a wing fell off, according to deputies with the Linn County Sheriff's Office. The people aboard both died in the crash.
They were identified as pilot Timothy Dean Carter, 46, of Portland and Jeff Earl Kropf,45, of Halsey. Carter was a licensed private pilot. Kropf was a commercially licensed pilot.
Kropf was the cousin of former Oregon legislator and radio talk show host of the same name Jeff Kropf.
The Albany-Democrat Herald reported that pilot Kropf was well known in the mid-Willamette Valley. He went by the name Tebo and loved to fly. Kropf, who also went by Tim Corban, was office manager at LebanAir Aviation, the paper reported.
He took a number of young people on first flights as part of the Experimental Aircraft Program Young Eagles flight program, the paper reported. He also had recently taken a 101-year-old man for a free flight.
Witnesses told Linn County investigators the wing came off the plane as it was turning left. It fell onto Highway 226 and the plane crashed into a nearby field. Both men were killed on impact.
The plane reportedly left Lebanon Municipal Airport around 3 p.m. for a pleasure flight and went down about 3:30 near Brewster Road and the highway.
The FAA says it was an RV-6 single-engine experimental plane that crashed. That models are home-built from a kit provided by Van's Aircraft of Aurora, Ore. This one was completed in 1996.
The Oregon Department of Transportation closed the highway due to debris from the crash on Highway 226 and it remained closed for about five hours for the crash investigation.

[zaitcev]

Safety Corner, we have heard of it.

Reporter, "I was told that a certain type of RVs are known for having their wings torn off." (news to me!)

Man, you can't be serious. Sure it was RV-3, not RV-6, but not hearing about RVs shedding wings is like not hearing about Zenith CH601 doing likewise... Or you didn't know about that one either?

[ussyorktown]

I drive a Flight Design. Why are you focusing on the hole and not the do-nut. Who cares what I, a pilot with a license for less than a year thinks or knows?

[designrs]

Tragic loss. Newbie here that never heard about certain aircraft being prone to "wing shedding". Seems to be a somewhat different issue than over-stressing the airframe? Can someone please elaborate on the topic? Thanks.

[ussyorktown]

Jennifer N Chris Brunette
I was driving on hwy 226. Watched the wing fall from the sky into road ahead of me. Crazy scary. I continued to watch debris from from sky after pulling over and looking at wing with another driver. We slid wing over out of lane to shoulder.
Reply · 2 · Like · Follow Post · 19 hours ago

Linda Martinka · Owner/Creative Photographer at Whimsy Hollow Photography
We were turning onto Brewster Rd. from 226 when my daughter said that she saw a plane fall out of the sky. I turned and saw the wreckage in the field so we pulled over and my husband hopped the fence into the field and went out to see if there was anything he could do to help the occupant while I called 911. While I was on the phone there was debris of some sort still floating down from the sky. Almost like really large, dark ashes. Once emergency crews arrived my husband told the first on scene what he'd found out there & that fuel was leaking~ to be careful. Then we left to get out of the way of all the other emergency responders that were arriving. Prayers go out to the family... such a tragedy.


Jeff Crow
Sad story, but what a way to go. Doing something you love to do! All my thoughts and prayers to the families!
Reply · Like · Follow Post · 2 hours ago

roadster - 1:03 AM
0 Votes
Report User Very sad...Personally I wouldn't fly one of those kit planes...Some pilots log hundreds of hours on them but for a wing to fall off??? No thanks...My sincere condolences to the Family and thank you to the SAR, EMT's and other emergency personnel that had to clear the crash..

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letrbuck - 2 hours ago
Tebo will be greatly missed, awesome man.
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Justme - 10 hours ago
I was just devastated when I read this article. "Tebo" was a truly wonderful man. Each my daughters would go to the Lebanon airport for the free plane rides each Strawberry Festival. Tebo made sure the children had a good time and always had a smile on his face. Thank you Tebo and God Bless. You will be missed!

[Torque]

I was not aware the RV line has problems coming apart in flight. Scary stuff indeed.......

Tony

[Jack Tyler]

It's amazing how quickly a small amount of info morphs into gross, misleading generalizations.

"Sure it was RV-3, not RV-6..."
I'm assuming this comment isn't meant to suggest it was an RV-3 that crashed, as RV-3's only carry a single person. I think the point was that there is reason to believe there were structural problems with RV-3's. But that's a misleading generalization.

Vans builds kits & sells them along with theirconstruction plans, like all kit manufacturers. The "RV-6" that crashed was an RV-6 design but the manufacturer of the plane, as with all E-AB aircraft that are amateur built, was the guy/gal who built the aircraft from the collection of pieces in the kits. Being an experimental, the builder can deviate from the plans and/or deviate from using some parts in the kits. And being an amateur, the builder can make some errors while building the kit. (Actually, this is quite common. It's just that most errors are discovered later in the build, and replacement parts ordered and installed). Are RV designs structurally deficient? Are the kit pieces deficient in some way for the purposes they are to serve? I have yet to see that demonstrated by anyone.

To carry this one step further: Is the RV-6 representative of the current line of RV kits being sold by Vans? No, it is significantly different. All the current RV kits are CNC punched, which means the structural pieces fit together as designed when one lines up the holes. A builder can still screw things up...but honoring the design and building the aircraft as intended is now much easier to accomplish accurately. The RV-6 and earlier models were built after the builder first assembled a jig, so the accuracy of the build is a function of the accuracy of the jig. The point? Older RV designs had too levels of builder-induced construction errors. So let's not talk about RV models - and the kits from which they are built - as tho' they are all the same.

Finally, every a/c design has structural limits that must be honored in flight. We all know this. When a wing departs an a/c, Q#1 is whether the a/c was being flown within its design limits or outside those limits. RV-6 a/c have not been falling out of the sky and are not known for any generic, design-specific structural problems...and hundreds of them have been flying for several decades now, and within a more demanding flight envelope than most single-engine aircraft with which we are familiar. E.g. they are aerobatic-capable. So...if we must speculate, then it seems to me we should ponder two possible causes of an in-flight structural failure (which even that we can't be certain of, despite what a few folks think they saw). One possibility is non-compliance with the design by the builder during construction. The other is a poorly flown maneuver that exceeded the design envelope. Or some combo of the #1 and #2.

No, RV's are not 'known for shedding wings'. For more on all this, use the 'search' function at vansairforce.com

[designrs]

Thanks for the detail Jack. Informative as always.

[ussyorktown]

When I was called an ignorant pilot, I then did a google and a bing search and found nothing about Vans having wing separation. Nothing.
I also have been using Aurora Airport as my home airport in Oregon-the creator airport for Vans. If they had such a reputation then I would have heard something about our neighbor, a quarter mile away from where I park my CTSW.

[drseti]

This thread moved by moderator, from Hangar Talk to Safety Corner, where it belongs.

[ussyorktown]

Will anyone read it in Safety corner or will it not be read and thus do pilots no good?

[drseti]

Anyone clicking on "View Unread Posts" or "View New Posts" on the top of any page will find this, or any other new/unread post. Use the available features of the website, Dan, instead of dumping everything into one forum. There's a reason why we have multiple forums on this site.

[FastEddieB]

Anyone clicking on "View Unread Posts" or "View New Posts" on the top of any page will find this, or any other new/unread post.

FWIW, "View active topics" seems broken on both my Mac and iPad running Safari, returning no results.

"View new posts" sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, again returning no results.

I think both worked before, and its how I tend to browse other forums.

[drseti]

Thanks, Eddie. I'll pass that on to Gerald, our site owner. Maybe he can figure it out.

FYI, "View Active Topics" doesn't work on my Windows laptop either, though "view new posts", "view unanswered posts", "view unread posts", and "view your posts" all do.