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Hughes replica crashed

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Captain_John

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 3, 2003
Messages
699
Location
KPYM
...on the way home from OSH.

:(

I, for one really liked this plane. Here is the story as reported by avweb.com on their website.

The sleek and beautiful Hughes H-IB Racer, a one-of-a-kind homebuilt that attracted thousands of admirers last week at EAA AirVenture, crashed about 6:30 p.m. Monday night in Yellowstone National Park, killing its devoted and inspirational pilot, James Wright, 53, of Cottage Grove, Ore. The plane was on its way home from Oshkosh. It approached from the west about treetop level, the Associated Press reported Tuesday, and struck the bank of the Firehole River near the main park road, about five miles north of Old Faithful geyser. The crash started a fire that was quickly snuffed by park workers. Nobody on the ground was hurt. Wright's long-time friend Dennis Parker said no cause has been determined but the aircraft had a history of propeller pitch control problems. "It kept going into fine pitch," he said. That jibes with a report in the News-Record, of Gillette, Wyo., where Wright stopped to refuel about 90 minutes before the crash. ''The air's thin enough here that the propeller gets stuck in low gear,'' he told the News-Record. ''I'm just trying to get home.'' Parker said Wright often used simplified terms when talking to the mainstream press about technical subjects and likened fine and coarse pitch on a constant-speed propeller to the low and high gears of a car. Parker said that although Wright appeared to be in excellent health, investigators are looking into whether a health crisis might have contributed to the crash. The airplane made its first flight in July 2002. Wright flew the replica to a world-record speed for the airplane's class last September, reaching 304 mph at Reno, Nev., on the 67th anniversary of Hughes' first record in the original airplane.

So sad.

:confused: CJ
 
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