Anatomy of a homebuilt aircraft failure

"He couldn't find anything wrong with it so he chose to fly the airplaine again." This says all about the attitude of the builder.

The best advise I ever got when I became a technician was unless you can explain why something isn’t functioning correctly it will fail. No matter what you have to do find what is causing the problem then fix it in a way that you believe is overkill.

It should be pointed out that the vast majority of all homebuild / experimental - amateur build airplanes are Not bad designs and are safe to fly. Most are build by very well designed plans & with proven methods. There is the EAA with chapters at about every Airport and they help folks with advise and inspection. Anybody who wants to build a plane can get help IF HE IS WILLING to listen and learn. Very small single seat planes have very little oversight requirements, but even with that almost all of them are very safe. Its just a hobby that rewards education and due process. Please do not come to prejudice conclusions just because media hype about every crash and no report about all the safe planes flying around...

I am a pilot and a builder as well as having experience as a test pilot for homebuilts and repaired certified aircraft. I only took this as a word of caution to would be uneducated designers. Not as criticism of homebuilts in general. As an owner of an experimental aircraft I also now that nunbers and per hrs flown...amature built aircraft have a disproportionate ratio of accidents....not necessarily the fault of the design itself but more often than not...the pilot not properly familiarizing themselves with the aircraft before attempting flight or flight envelope expansion. Still. .the point here is well presented and a lesson for all should be applied when purchasing an aircraft.. especially an experimental airplane.

I build RC airplanes (looking into home built) and would never use such foolish construction practices. I guess he is a possible Darwin award nominee.

That is unbelievable that he was able to build and fly this without anyone saying that the structure would fail. This design was doomed on the drawing board.

Logic failure on the part of the builder.  He built the structure for the ribs and appearance instead of the spar and function.  Just a failure on his part to understand how the wing carries the other load.  Apparently, he never really asked himself what he was trying to do regarding the loads.   People make the same sort of logic mistakes when building other structures (ie, decks or roofs that collapse, which is a failure to understand how the load is transferred to the ground).  But flying is relatively unforgiving.  Even dropping 50 feet is going to be fatal or nearly so as that load is transferred to the ground.  Unbelievable that he passed off his ignorance to others who bought what he built.  Beware in the homebuilt market!!!

Fuel leaks should always be a red flag for a possible structural problem!

The full presentation is on Youtube, but I cannot put a link in the comments. Just do a search for "FAASTeam - Experimental Aircraft Accidents" on Youtube and it comes up as the first result.

Thank you, YT algorithm. That graphic came up at 2:35 and I literally said "you can't be serious", but a few seconds later it was confirmed that was deadly serious. What the holy heck was that builder thinking!

About the only good thing is that no innocent parties were injured or killed, only the builder/designer who did such an appalling job in the design, that thing was destined to crash by its own poor design.

I support all the comments here about most homebuilt aircraft being safe or, in some cases, safer than factory built aircraft. BUT, and there is a big Kardashian but about this, NO aircraft will be safe if designed wrong, built wrong, maintained wrong, tested wrong, piloted wrong or recklessly, or by ignoring ALL aviation common sense accumulated since the Wright Brothers. ALL OF THESE wrong approaches happened in this deadly incident. I don't make it a sport to make fun of the dead but this man's hard-headedness was incredibly shocking. Thanks God the huge majority of aircraft homebuilders are not like him!!!

Forgot to mention, thanks for posting video, very informative.

I built a Mini-Max several years ago, and lost it after engine failure on takeoff - avoid Hirth. When the engine quit, I could not get back to the runway, and elected to land in a field on airport property. Unfortunately, in the few seconds I had to think, I failed to remember that there were power lines at the edge of the field. They were blocked from view by my forward fuselage, and my landing gear hit them. The plane stopped, and nosed into the ground, then caught fire. I walked away without a scratch. I was lucky, but a well designed, correctly built and inspected aircraft with a four point harness didn't hurt... Do what you love, but be smart, and be careful...

It's one thing to have bravado and be antiestablishment. It's another to be suicidal stupid.

I still can't wrap my head around the thought processes that hung 2/3 of a wing off a luan skin and what looked like 1x2 dimensional stripping. Hell, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable in a homebuilt aircraft that didn't have a continuous tube steel spar and fuselage spine....

I feel like this isn't the entire story. Why did the builder jump up and down to load the wing when attempting to find a fuel leak?? Was the fuel tank in the fuselage or wing? The spar caps look to be one piece continues but the shear web is completely missing and if it was there it must have completely failed at the glue joint. I don't believe someone capable of building multiple aircraft would join spar caps at every rib and not make a full span spar!

Ho...ly... mother of god. Ever since I was a little kid, I'd been building and flying RC model airplanes. I've even made a couple of large (8') gliders made out of copy paper and cardboard. I swear when they said the spar only extended into the first third or so of the wing my jaw hit the goddamn floor!!

What was the NTSB accident number for this incident ?

Few people with any common sense would make mistakes like that.  Anyone that's even built a few model airplanes knows the main spars need to be one solid piece.  How often will a plane break up in mid-air?  lol.  Once in a blue moon!  Wanna do something REALLY dangerous?  Drive a car!