CEN16LA096 · Raymond Z Brown CONDOR
Raymond Z Brown CONDOR · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Centralia Municipal Airport (KENL) to Centralia Municipal Airport (KENL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA096
- 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
- 1 · 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
Raymond Z Brown CONDOR
- Aircraft type
- Raymond Z Brown CONDOR
- 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
- N41852
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centralia Municipal Airport (KENL), Centralia, ILTo Centralia Municipal Airport (KENL), Centralia, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the sport pilot departing in his experimental, amateur-built gyroplane when, about 300 ft above ground level, the gyroplane turned right and the rotor blades began to slow. The gyroplane then made a sharp left turn, descended, and abruptly pitched up before impacting a field. A postaccident examination of the gyroplane found that the belt driving the prerotator had broken and had become entangled in the engine timing belt, which would have resulted in a loss of engine power. No other anomalies were detected with the airframe and engine. An autopsy did not reveal any medical concerns with the pilot.
Probable cause
The failure of the prerotator belt, which impeded the engine's timing belt and resulted in a loss of engine power at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA096
- Event ID
- 20160202X90237
- Case number
- CEN16LA096
- 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: 08a2faac72e03ada353534ab06e68fc1ffb147d862ddeae451d68fb2ad68997a; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:40:42.384Z.