Florida Man Uninjured in Local Homemade Copter Crash
Posted
Aaron Organ-aorgan@timesuniononline.com
MENTONE – A Florida man was not hurt after his homemade helicopter crashed at the Mentone airport mid-afternoon Saturday.
Emergency personnel were called just after 3 p.m. Saturday on a report of an aircraft crash at the small airport at 12296 W. CR 600S. Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Dept. deputies, Mentone fire crews and medics arrived to find a homemade helicopter crashed on its side in a bean field just west of the airport.
The 2008 Heli-cycle’s operator – 61-year-old William Robert Hyde, of Miami, Fla. – was not injured in the crash.
Hyde told investigators that he had just taken off west-bound from the airport when the chopper’s engine stalled and died at some 100 feet in the air, according to the sheriff’s department. The craft then plummeted to the ground below.
Investigators said the helicopter was “severely” damaged. No estimation of damage was reported.
The sheriff’s department has forwarded the case to the Federal Aviation Administration office in South Bend.
