LAX00LA082 · Mince JURKA MJ77
Mince JURKA MJ77 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK) to Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA082
- 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
Mince JURKA MJ77
- Aircraft type
- Mince JURKA MJ77
- 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
- N751JR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK), Stockton, CATo Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69), Petaluma, CA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Terrain condition › Plowed/furrowed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a forced landing in a plowed field following a loss of engine power. The airplane was a 3/4 scale P-51 replica with a fuel injected automotive engine. The flight departed Stockton with full fuel onboard, which was 32 gallons of fuel in two 16-gallon tanks, and the engine burned about 14 gallons per hour. While cruising at 3,500 feet, the airplane gradually began to lose speed and altitude. The manifold pressure remained at a cruise setting, but the pilot felt the engine was not producing power. He switched fuel tanks from left to right, cycled the ignition switch, and adjusted the mixture. The engine coolant and oil temperature gauges remained in the green, but the power continued to decline. The pilot attempted to land in a plowed field with the landing gear down, but the landing gear separated from the airplane and damaged the wing spar. The pilot reported that in order to assist in the recovery, he drained all of the fuel out of the left fuel tank, and all but 5 gallons from the right tank the day after the accident. The recovery agent drained 5 gallons of fuel from the right fuel tank and no fuel from the left tank. The fuel selector valve had been disconnected so he could not tell what position it was in. The fuel screen was clean and clear of debris; the fuel manifold distribution valve was clean and contained no fuel. The spark plugs were in good condition. After several attempts, investigators started the engine and ran it up to 3,000 rpm. They were not able to run it long because the water pump belt was broken and they couldn't get coolant to flow. A shop owner in Stockton said the airplane came in for an airshow in October, but had engine trouble. He rented the pilot shop space to work on the engine. He said the engine had a broken valve and the pilot repaired the engine himself. He said he advised the pilot to fly around the airport for an hour, but the pilot said he had run the engine on the ground for an hour and experienced no problems. The shop owner said he observed the takeoff and thought that the engine ran so rough that it could not become airborne. A company in Stockton refueled this airplane and the pilot's T-6 during the airshow with a combined total of 90 gallons and had no records of refueling it since that time.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight for unknown reasons resulting in a forced landing in a plowed field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA082
- Event ID
- 20001212X20397
- Case number
- LAX00LA082
- 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: 0d6882476f3c7534a728be9b8d193f2e445fcc9583f2f9707f6c8b9f6c5dcc8b; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:21:02.714Z.