ERA15CA121 · Autogyro Gmbh CALIDUS
Autogyro Gmbh CALIDUS · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Crozet, VA (private airstrip) to Eagle's Nest Airport (W13)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA121
- 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
Autogyro Gmbh CALIDUS
- Aircraft type
- Autogyro CALIDUS
- Category
- Gyroplane
- 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
- N595X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crozet, VA (private airstrip)To Eagle's Nest Airport (W13), Waynesboro, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2014)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After departing from the airport where the pilot kept the gyroplane, he flew to his family farm and landed without incident on a 1,500-foot-long grass polo field. Later on, during an attempted takeoff from the same field, when the gyroplane was traveling at 25 to 30 knots and was about 150 feet into the takeoff roll, the gyroplane rose to a balanced position on its main wheels, but then began to bounce up and down violently. The pilot then lost control of the gyroplane and it rolled over on its left side about 300 feet into the takeoff roll. The pilot advised that there was nothing mechanically wrong with the gyroplane. He further advised that it was "pilot error" and that he had "over advanced" the blades by pushing the control stick too far forward and that the blades were not yet at speed (too low a rotor rpm) when he did it. The pilot was not injured, but the gyroplane incurred damage to the rotor blades, the pusher propeller, the horizontal stabilizer, the vertical stabilizer, the rudder, the engine cowling, and the wheel pants.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper control inputs which resulted in a loss of control and rollover during the takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA121
- Event ID
- 20150205X21520
- Case number
- ERA15CA121
- 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: c14245e1c5467c56de95760a20e90c326682fb9022097847177c6c9e9a48cd4b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:04:19.381Z.