| I was at Wilton the day it crashed and witnessed the whole thing. After dropping a load at around 8000', the new pilot lost power on the way down, (cause unknown to me) at altitude. He lined up from the West and looked set up fine for the runway if a touch too high, but nothing that couldn't be corrected with flap aplication or side slipping.
Instead he choose to extend down along the runway and land from the other end. We were at the runway mid-point and we could see as he passed that he was getting quite low, and still needing to make a 180 deg downwind turn. He commenced this turn around 100-150 ft , lost airspeed and the aircraft stalled and fell to the end of the airstrip from an altitude of about 30-40 ft. Wrecked a good jump-plane at the time as i had made several jumps from it in previous months.Pilot sustained chest injuries but survived as I recall...............................Ross Millard |