ERA15LA304 · Board James A ZENITH 601 HD
Board James A ZENITH 601 HD · Accident during initial climb
From Stuart Powell Field (DVK) to Stuart Powell Field (DVK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA304
- 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
Board James A ZENITH 601 HD
- Aircraft type
- Board James ZENITH 601
- 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
- N740JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stuart Powell Field (DVK), Danville, KYTo Stuart Powell Field (DVK), Danville, KY
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire; Tree(s)
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who also the owner/builder of the experimental, amateur-built airplane, was conducting the airplane's first test flight. The pilot stated that, during the takeoff roll, the airplane used about half of the runway surface, or five times the distance of a nominal takeoff roll, before becoming airborne. He added that the airplane then climbed to about 350 ft, at which point the flight controls began to feel "mushy." The airplane then entered a descent and impacted wires and trees before coming to rest in an open field. The pilot reported that the engine was producing full power throughout the flight but that the airplane would neither climb nor maintain altitude.
Postaccident examination and testing of the airplane revealed that the pilot had likely misread the propeller adjustment tool when installing and adjusting the pitch of the ground-adjustable propeller and had inadvertently set the blades to an extremely low pitch. The low pitch of the propeller blades resulted in inadequate engine thrust, as evidenced by the long takeoff roll and the airplane's inability to climb.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper adjustment of the propeller blade angle, which resulted in inadequate engine thrust, and his decision to continue the takeoff despite the excessively long takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA304
- Event ID
- 20150810X11953
- Case number
- ERA15LA304
- 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: bf95dcb0a1ec5954ebe29c9d3a8fcf80aa65324eea9c849b48215a2ce47cb1af; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:38:29.162Z.