RV-8 N800KE - Fatal accident

[guidoism]

Just got this from my brother at the FAA: N800KE crashed today outside of Langley, WA.

[guidoism]

Looks like it was an 8A, serial 82281 from Texas. Not sure who the pilot was or whether he is a member here.

[RicoB]

Very sad!! My prayers to the family

[Shark]

At least we can't sit here saying "why would you fly into weather like that! ?" Very hard to read. Very sad

[rockwoodrv9]

Bad news. Sorry for the pilot and RV community in Washington.

[mdmba]

This was one of my buddies that we fly with...we call ourselves the flying aardvarks..as you can tell, we dont take ourselves too seriously. Great guy, excellent pilot. Landing W10 to the south is tricky...but he had done it dozens times prior. Awaiting NTSB..but RIP buddy! Good news, though...his wife is doing much better than expected!

[Bob Martin]

Originally Posted by mdmba

This was one of my buddies that we fly with...we call ourselves the flying aardvarks..as you can tell, we dont take ourselves too seriously. Great guy, excellent pilot. Landing W10 to the south is tricky...but he had done it dozens times prior. Awaiting NTSB..but RIP buddy! Good news, though...his wife is doing much better than expected!

Sorry for your loss........I hate losing flying buddies to natural causes but seems like a flying accident would be the worst.
Thanks for kind words about your friend and his wife.
RIP

[RV10Rob]

Final report is out:
https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/a...port/98833/pdf

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be:
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering in the airport traffic pattern, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and a loss of control at an altitude too low for recovery.

[Captain Avgas]

Originally Posted by mdmba

Great guy, excellent pilot. Landing W10 to the south is tricky...but he had done it dozens times prior.

Classic stall/spin turning from base to final.

The NTSB report indicates that the flight was recorded by an onboard camera.
A couple of comments in the report caught my eye:

One was that the pilot turned from downwind to base at 77 kts at 540 ft msl at an airport with an elevation of 271 ft msl. That means he turned base at 269 ft above the ground. That's very very low and was presumably the start of his problem.

According to the report the pilot was 63 years old and "The pilot's most recent FAA airman medical certificate had expired; he had not completed the requirements of BasicMed."

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the report was that it made no mention of whether the aircraft had a stall warning device installed. My guess is that it did not.

Vans Aircraft supply stall warning devices with all of their kits now but for decades they did not. That was a very poor decision on Vans part. And the price over the years has been costly.

[sailvi767]

That’s a very poor accident report. It totally omits what may have caused the loss of speed and what type of stall warning or AOA the aircraft had onboard. With the FAA putting a increased emphasis on AOA equipment I am surprised it was not discussed.