SEA08CA184 · Wheat Excalibur EX
Wheat Excalibur EX · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Moses Lake Municipal Airport (W20) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08CA184
- 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
Wheat Excalibur EX
- Aircraft type
- Wheat EXCALIBUR EX
- 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
- N2505Q
- Operator
- Darrin Jackson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moses Lake Municipal Airport (W20), Moses Lake, WATo 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
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a local, personal flight in an experimental airplane. While in cruise flight approximately 600 feet above ground level he heard a loud bang and the airplane entered a right turn. The pilot used aileron to counteract the turn; however, the airplane descended into the reservoir below. Post accident inspection showed that the rivets securing the rudder pedals had sheared in overload and there was no evidence of corrosion. During the impact sequence, the fuselage sustained structural damage. According to the kit supplier, the rudder pedal horns are secured using three rivets per pedal. The kit supplier indicated that the rivets could be put under excessive stress while operating the airplane over gross weight and/or powering the airplane with an engine that produces over 65 horsepower. The engine installed in the airframe produced 85 horsepower. As a result of the accident, the kit supplier suggested that the builders include a rudder pedal security check and if they are loose, replace two of the three rivets with two bolts. All future designs kits produced and shipped will include the bolts.
Probable cause
The right rudder pedal attach rivets sheared due to overload.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08CA184
- Event ID
- 20080917X01481
- Case number
- SEA08CA184
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 7cf2a0c2f4f7feea7af2ff909ff687eb2cb47a9e99c763fd40a6ad4524b8a567; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:14:07.123Z.