CHI98LA047 · Hall RV-6
Hall RV-6 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From K46 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA047
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Hall RV-6
- Aircraft type
- Hall RV-6
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N36AH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From K46To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, rudder control attach points › Fatigue
- Flt control syst, rudder control › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that during the initial takeoff, as the tail wheel came off the ground, the airplane began to 'fishtail.' When the pilot made rudder corrections, the airplane's directional control got worse. The airplane became airborne entering an uncontrolled left turn. The pilot said that he did not have 'positive response' when he turned back parallel to the runway. The pilot reduced power to land. The nose of the airplane tracked right away from the runway heading. The pilot tried to turn back to the left, but the airplane's controls would not respond. The pilot reduced the power to idle and impacted the ground in a left nose down slip approximately 20 feet left of the runway. Examination of the airplane's rudder controls revealed a fracture outside of the weld attaching the base of a T-shaped bar beneath the pilot's left rudder pedal to the torque tube connecting the left rudder pedals to the left and right seats. Further examination of the broken parts revealed a fatigue crack on the torque tube, originating on the rear outside portion of the fracture.
Probable cause
a fatigue failure of the torque tube outside of the weld and the fractured pilot's side left rudder pedal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA047
- Event ID
- 20001208X09157
- Case number
- CHI98LA047
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: debc18e45d5669c81e5500596fd9fdc2b21fdc68e814f7cb6cb8c57facce5a2c; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:10:39.221Z.