Patrick Dean's first flight in the plane he spent eight years building got under way with a smooth takeoff and ascent.
But only minutes after lifting off from Suburban Airport in Laurel, the small plane suddenly jerked to the left. The wing flaps dropped uncontrollably, the aircraft went into a 180-degree turn, and Dean looked down at the Baltimore-Washington Parkway for a place to make an emergency landing.
"I'm in trouble," the 42-year- old architect from Howard County recalled thinking. The plane went into a nose dive, heading for a patch of woods just off the highway, and Dean closed his eyes.
One of about 29,000 pilots of home-built aircraft in the United States, Dean was lucky on that brisk Friday afternoon last month, coming away from the crash with just a broken nose and bumps and bruises. But the accident damaged his flying aspirations nearly as extensively as his aircraft.
His passion for aviation had driven him to spend 1,000 hours and tens of thousands of dollars to build the sleek, unusual-looking plane. Now he wonders whether he'll ever fly again, much less build another plane.
"To see it broken up like this - it really breaks your heart," Dean, a father of two from Clarksville, said last week as he looked at the wreckage, which sits in a hangar at the Laurel airport.
Experimental aircraft, a category that includes homebuilt planes, make up 10 percent of all general aviation aircraft in the United States. But the numbers have grown steadily over the past 15 years, according to the Experimental Aircraft Association. The pilots must be licensed, but the planes need not be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration the way manufactured small aircraft are.
Still, the safety record of experimental aircraft is nearly identical to that of manufactured small planes, according to EAA, a Wisconsin-based organization of recreational aviation enthusiasts.
`Very conscientious'
"For the most part, `home-builders' are very conscientious about what they're building and the care that they take in following designs," said Chris Dancy, spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a general aviation advocacy group based in Frederick that boasts more than 415,000 members.
"Once they're actually flying them, they're held to the same safety standards as any pilot," Dancy said.
