This article was published in the Oregonian yesterday was sent to me by FishinMishin2 (Keith) from the IFISH board. It was very intresting article.

Gary Hanson Article

RT-
My thoughts are still with you as my dad is a private pilot and a tragedy like this hits close to home.

Thanks for posting the Oregonian article Ryan. ... For you pilots out there that are further interested:

... There are 2 conflicting things in it; that the crash was near the Jackpot Nevada airport, which it was, but the picture sentence mentioned the Elko airport which was many miles west of the site. It also mentioned the crash was near the runway (which we were initially informed), but it was actally atop the reportedly sometimes problematic hillside about a half mile north of the runway on a wide turn before approach where it suddenly went down nose first. We were able to drive up a fire road to the site and plant a cross where Gary's plane struck ground. We will scatter part of his ashes over one of his favorite places. ... More for pilots....

I was learning to fly this plane. I had flown with my brother many times and we never had anything go wrong. It had 2 stick controls, one for each person. As mentioned it was a high performance plane that was a lot of fun, but I wasn't aware of the apparent poor track record of these planes. Gary taught me to do the up and wing over moves earlier this year. Our last flight about 3 weeks ago was up to Packwood Washington near the base of Mt. Rainer. We encountered significant turbulance but this plane handled it all well. He even did a 360 degree rollover no prob up there, over the upper Cowlitz watershed area. We just can't understand how this plane went down with 2 good pilots aboard! We only have the sketch of what was said in the Oregonian article. We won't get the official findings from the FAA for a while. How long does this usually take? I've heard it can be quite awhile, and that will be a tough wait to find out what happened - if they can. Take care. - Steve