DFW07CA175 · Mellema Bede 4
Mellema Bede 4 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Ennis Municipal Airport (F41) to Ennis, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07CA175
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Mellema Bede 4
- Aircraft type
- Mellema BEDE 4
- 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
- N76VR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ennis Municipal Airport (F41), Ennis, TXTo Ennis, TX
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 on ground/water
- 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
- Landing gear, tailwheel › Disconnected
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not possible
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 520-hour private pilot lost directional control of the single-engine tailwheel equipped experimental airplane during the landing roll on. The pilot reported that while in the pattern for the 3,999-foot long, by 50-foot wide runway, the tailwheel developed an excessive shimmy resulting in the loss of directional control. The pilot added that during his fifth touch and go, he first noted that the airplane started a slight drift to the left, which was followed by an uncommanded turn to the right. The airplane exited off the right side of the asphalt runway, into the grass. The airplane subsequently nosed-over and came to rest in an inverted position. The pilot and passenger were able to exit the airplane unassisted. An examination of the airplane revealed that the engine firewall sustained structural damage during the accident sequence. Additionally, the right steering chain was found separated from the steering arm of the tailwheel assembly. The reason for the separation could not be determined. The winds at the time of the accident were reported as light and variable.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain control of the airplane following the disconnect of the tailwheel steering chain while landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07CA175
- Event ID
- 20070813X01173
- Case number
- DFW07CA175
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2da7ad0738321959016caa891dbe093ee87021da1214b3d63f74b9bb97bd8f5a; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:25:54.203Z.