Quickie down @ Gila Bend

This does not sound like a plane that wanted to fly...

"A witness reported that he was working on his airplane when he saw two men perform a preflight and then board the accident airplane. The engine started and was taxied to the hold short line where it sat for about 20 minutes, with the engine running before the airplane took off on the active runway. During the takeoff run, about a 1/3 of the way down the runway, the witness observed a dirt cloud, and surmised that the landing gear must have departed the runway surface. The airplane returned to centerline and continued down the runway; about midway down the runway, it appeared that the airplane was yanked off the runway and struggled to gain altitude. The witness estimated that the airplane reached an altitude of about 50 ft when it made a left turn, stalled, and impacted the ground."

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/103267/pdf
 
Gila Bend isn't a difficult field by any means (I flew there from BXK many a time as a student), although yesterday was extremely hot and humid. I have to wonder how much time the PIC had in this very unusual a/c, and how familiar he was with high DA. *smh*
 
Fearless Tower said:
They sat at the hold short line for twenty minutes at Gila Bend in June????
Click to expand...

I read that and thought they may have been working through some sort of a problem.

The pilot survived and the passenger did not. As a pilot I can't imagine what living with that knowledge in my head would be like ... :(
 
I’ve got a couple hundred hours in a quickie, Q2. I owned a beautiful one for several years. They are only 65hp, but they behave very much like a high performance aircraft: extremely light controls, high roll rate, very sensitive in pitch, very high wing loading, high canard stall speed, and very slippery. If you point the nose down, it’ll go from stall speed to red line in just a few seconds. I saw 130 knots easy in cruise in mine.
They have a big bubble canopy that pushes forward/ upwards to open, and on the ground it can get very hot inside very quickly, so most guys taxi with it open. The way the canopy latch works, it was easiest to taxi with it open slightly but “sitting” on the latch, so that it allowed air in the cockpit but looked and acted on the ground like it was closed. If a pilot forgot to close that canopy and took off, it would induce a violent up and down pitching of the aircraft as the canopy bounced open and closed. Because the stick and canopy latch are both on the centerline of the aircraft, the only way you can close the canopy in flight was to reach across your body and fly this very sensitive airplane with your left hand as you reach up and grab the bouncing canopy with your right, latching it closed. More than one guy has crashed them because of this.
Not saying this is what happened but if it was a hot day and a new owner it makes me wonder.
 
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