Why did it crash ?


My educated guess is :

With 70 flying hours ( with high performance prop plane and 40 minutes in a BD-5 ) mr. Giertz was not the best test pilot for the plane he himself called a "rascal".

He radioed of temperature rise to 230 F and came in for a landing in 5 minutes after take off.

Stall speed was 80 mph ( or kts ? ) and plane has very high attitude position of the tail on the ground and no flaps.


My speculation:

He may have caught in the ground effect and kept on going at high speed ( due to no virtually drag of the airframe )and to reduce speed he throttled to idle and prop started to twist the plane near 90 mph and to compensate this this he gave opposite aileron and lost lift of the wing due to the NFL414F re area 10 000 000 foil was only performing well in slightly faster speeds.

The prop that was a wooden fixed one was optimized to go 300 mph and was almost biger than the elevator stab.