CEN18LA200 · Irlbeck Thomas H RV 8 UNDESIGNAT
Irlbeck Thomas H RV 8 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Lake Elmo Airport (21D) to L O Simenstad Municipal Airport (OEO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA200
- 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
Irlbeck Thomas H RV 8 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Irlbeck Thomas RV-8
- 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
- N214FF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Elmo Airport (21D), Lake Elmo, MNTo L O Simenstad Municipal Airport (OEO), Osceola, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1988)
- 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
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while in cruise flight in the experimental, amateur-built airplane, the radio and GPS lights flickered, followed by a total loss of engine power. He attempted to troubleshoot the loss of power and then conducted a forced landing to a field, during which the airplane impacted a fence; the wings were substantially damaged. Examination revealed that the wire connection from the main battery to the engine's electronic ignition had melted just above the terminal attachment. Although the airplane was equipped with a backup battery, the connection from the backup battery to the ignition was disconnected, which pre and the wire connection from the electronic ignition to the backup battery was not connected to the battery terminal. While the melted wire that connected the main battery to the electronic ignition would still have allowed power to the electronic ignition from the backup battery, the lack of connection to the backup battery provided no power to the electronic ignition and resulted in the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to damaged and disconnected electronic ignition wires from both the main and backup batteries, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA200
- Event ID
- 20180529X02415
- Case number
- CEN18LA200
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-05-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f6c1874e0d3f506f7f979a7e5c08d02e9db0ce2332bb9aa75699a65de9ffa030; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:16:58.998Z.