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earendel · #1 Post by **earendel** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:32 am

We had quite a bit of excitement in our neighborhood yesterday. We live near a commercial aviation airfield (Bowman Field). Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the family room using the computer when we heard a big bang. I looked out the French doors and saw smoke rising into the sky a few streets over. elwing and I went over to see what had happened - a small plane had crashed into the front yard of a house. It turns out that the pilot was a renowned photographer named Richard Shenk, who was traveling from Colorado to Roanoak, VA, where he had scheduled a medical physical. I guess he was landing at Bowman for a stopover (in an interview his wife said he planeed to stay overnight here). No word yet as to the cause of the crash, but the pilot is in serious condition.

http://www.whas11.com/topstories/storie ... 2fd4b.html

MarleysGh0st · #2 Post by **MarleysGh0st** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:45 am

It looks like it was sunny when the accident happened, so he didn't have to make an instrument approach through bad weather? Very strange.

And it doesn't make sense to me that he lives in Colorado but was flying to Virginia for a physical. Relatively few doctors are FAA-certified medical examiners, but they're not that rare!

earendel · #3 Post by **earendel** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:21 am

MarleysGh0st wrote:It looks like it was sunny when the accident happened, so he didn't have to make an instrument approach through bad weather? Very strange.

And it doesn't make sense to me that he lives in Colorado but was flying to Virginia for a physical. Relatively few doctors are FAA-certified medical examiners, but they're not that rare!

Speculation is that he had some sort of medical issue that caused him to black out. Either that or he had some sort of mechanical problem.