On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:46:16 GMT, "Thomas J. Paladino Jr."
wrote:

Fuel exhaustion? Seems plausible.

Nah, there would have been a mayday call or something if they had just ran
out of gas.

Not necessarily... the pilot may not have known the actual fuel state,
depending on how accurate the gauges were or how well they were working at
the time of the accident. If the engine quit suddenly, things might have
happened too fast for a mayday.

The apparent lack of post-impact fire really argues for no fuel onboard.

The one article has a witness statement that I think could be telling:
"The plane appeared to be flying normally, flat, and then went up like it
was trying to go higher, went into a spiral and crashed into the ground."

Sounds to me like the pilot or passenger could have accidentally hit the
control stick, pitched the plane up suddenly and set her into a spin.
(assuming the witness is reliable).

Certainly a possibility, though it's not a common accident mode. It's
tough to accidentally pull a stick back hard, but it could have been
knocked forward and the pitch-up was from over-reaction. Seems a bit of a
reach, though.

You're certainly right about witness reliability. Back when the second
Wheeler Express prototype crashed on its way to Oshkosh, they had an
eyewitness on the local news. The guy said that the plane "fluttered down,
definitely NOT in a spin." And, of course, the plane WAS in a spin...it's
just that the non-pilot observer didn't recognize it.

Let's see what the NTSB preliminary has to say...

Ron Wanttaja