DUNGENESS — Sequim-area pilot Ken Brown was smiling Tuesday after he and his passenger walked away unhurt from the two-seat, single-propeller private plane he had just purchased a week ago after its prop and landing gear were seriously damaged during a hard landing.
“It appears that we lost lift,” said Brown, who made a precautionary landing at the Blue Ribbon Farm airstrip, a private grass airstrip in the upscale home and hangar community west of the intersection of Lotzgesell and Kitchen-Dick roads.
Brown, who appeared shaken from the crash landing, said he was fine as he walked around taking photos of the damaged aircraft for insurance purposes.
Brown approached the airstrip at about 80 mph, he said, missing a 100-foot bluff by about 30 yards when his plane landed, its nose and propeller leaving large divots where it hit the grass, before it rolled to a stop tail-up.
Brown, a pilot since 1996 who was taking his new aircraft on a test run, was flying the new Van’s Aircraft RV-6A shortly after 1 p.m. when he and his instructor, Tom Hart of Sequim, decided to land the plane after noticing a leak in the plane’s right fuel tank.
Clallam County Fire District No. 3 firefighters siphoned the remaining fuel from the plane, while two Clallam County sheriff’s deputies arrived to assist.
The deputies called in an investigator from the Seattle office of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“I was talking to my landscaper when I saw it and said, ‘Boy, he’s coming in awful fast,’” said a Lands End Lane neighbor who witnessed the crash-landing but declined to give his name.
Brown purchased the fixed-wing, single-engine plane from a resident of Carmichael, Calif., a Sacramento suburb.
The plane is classified as experimental, according to FAA records.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
