BANGOR, Maine — The pilot of a tiny, experimental plane that made a pit stop at Old Town’s Dewitt Field in June crashed the same aircraft in a California city Tuesday afternoon.
Dave Robins, a 29-year-old pilot with 14 years of flight experience, survived the crash but his plane did not.
The 700-pound, 14-foot-long KR-2 experimental plane crashed during an apparent emergency landing in a field short of a runway at the Tehachapi Municipal Airport shortly before 4 p.m. PDT, said Gary Soucy, general manager of Old Town’s Carter Aero Works.
“The plane pretty much disintegrated around him,” said Soucy. “They didn’t need to extract him from the plane because he was just laying on the ground.”
Carter Aero Works’ owner, Curt Carter, is a longtime friend of Robins’ and went to visit him Tuesday night at Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, Calif., according to Soucy.
Soucy said Carter told him Wednesday morning that Robins escaped with surprisingly minor injuries considering the damage done to the plane.
“Dave only suffered a broken ankle and a broken wrist,” Soucy said.
Robins was still at the hospital Wednesday afternoon and was listed in stable condition, according to a Kern Medical Center spokeswoman.
Carter was able to visit Robins because he is living in California while working as an engineer on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, an eight-person vehicle intended to take passengers to space, Soucy said.
Robins didn’t recall much about what led up to the crash, according to Curtis and Soucy, but he believed it resulted from either a power loss or an engine failure that occurred as he was lining up for a landing.
Robbins landed in Old Town in June during a cross-country voyage during which he planned to “hit up all four corners of the U.S.” It also gave him the opportunity to visit Carter, who was in Maine at the time, and other friends at Carter Aero Works.
He decided to take the trip during a break from his job in Afghanistan, where Robins maintains and repairs unmanned aerial vehicles as a contractor for the military.
He said at the time of his visit that he had purchased the KR-2 in 2009. Someone built the kit aircraft in a garage in 1981 — making the aircraft two years older than its pilot — but it hadn’t flown since 1991, according to Robins.
The Federal Aviation Administration has no record of any incidents involving the plane or Robins in the past. The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
“I think that his skill in landing the airplane saved his life,” Soucy said. “That’s where all your training comes in — for that moment right there.”
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I have no problem with these experimental aircraft until they land on my house. An experimental car slowly rolls to the side of the road and waits for a tow.
Boy, I don’t know, I’ve been reading about a lot of cars and trucks smashing into houses.
At least you can attribute those crashes to pilot error.
I’d fly an experimental aircraft built and maintained by someone who cared and knew what they were doing before a standard category aircraft not being taken care of. This could have happened to any aircraft, this time it turns out to be experimental. Last week it was standard category aircraft that were in good shape – sometimes, the forces of nature causes problems for those that fly.
That’s a good point. Aren’t the licenses different for everything from motorized hang gliders up to a Cessna?
In 2004 Sport Pilot was added for those folks not wanting to go through the Class III medical process. It allows people to fly aircraft with a gross weight of 1320lbs or less, including powered parachutes, trikes, and ultra-lights heavier than 254lbs. No license is required at all to fly an ultra-light under Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) 103 which means under the 254lb limit.
A lot of private pilots are flying the sport pilot class of aircraft because they are much less expensive to fly fuel-wise. This gentleman is, I believe, a licensed private pilot. The accident has nothing to do with licensing though. His capabilities are not the question. I saw the aircraft at Old Town and while it had lots of air miles, it was in great shape.
Sometimes, having hundreds or even thousands of hours doesn’t keep bad things from happening. Flying means dealing with many diverse and dynamic forces, a lot of times at critical moments in the flight regimen. It sounds like his expertise, even with the catastrophic results shown, kept him from being a dead statistic instead of a live one – kudos for living through it!
A few years back I was snowmobiling up in Quebec with a buddy. Some of the guys in that club had motorized hang gliders on skis right next to the groomer shed. They were having a blast taking off on the snow-no license required I guess. Thanks for the information.