EAA Chapter President, Passenger Lost In Accident

Family and friends were gathered at New York's Oswego County Airport to witness the inaugural flight of Frank Romeo's home-built Lancair Legacy Saturday afternoon.

Instead of a celebratory conclusion to the flight, those friends and family are in mourning.

Romeo, 61, and friend Bill Hodge, 62, who had been helping Romeo build his plane for three years, died in a crash at about 2:30 pm in Volney, said Oswego County Sheriff Reuel Todd.

Among those invited to the first flight were Romeo's wife and Hodge's fiancée, who could only watch as the plane crashed, reported The (Syracuse) Post Standard.

According to friend Jack Briggs, who helped harness in both men, "The takeoff was perfect. It looked flawless. I can't imagine what happened."

Briggs, a former Navy pilot who flew for 62 years and a former flight instructor, said Romeo decided to fly his plane for the first time Saturday because the weather was decent.

"It sounded like an engine going off and on," said Dorothy Doney, who operates a bed and breakfast near the crash site. "It was more like a pop than a boom. You could tell something was wrong."

According to Briggs, the Lancair appeared to be less than 500 feet from the ground when Romeo started to make a turn.

"He was just starting his first turn, then the plane disappeared behind the hangars. I expected to see him coming back over to the field, but then I saw people running," Briggs said. 

"That first flight is always very critical. You're not positive everything is going to go well, but this one baffles me," Briggs added. "I'm totally blown away by this."

Romeo, president of EAA Chapter 486, based at Oswego County Airport, had been flying since 1968 and flew B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War.

Building the plane had become a "full-time job" since his 2005 retirement from Constellation Energy, Romeo wrote on the EAA Web site.

According to Hodge's fiancée, Janet Calp, Hodge had begun building his own plane, but unable to complete it due to time or money, he worked on Romeo's.

The two men traveled to the Lancair factory in Oregon to begin assembling the aircraft. After that, Hodge would make a weekly trip to Romeo's garage to work on the plane, said Calp.

Briggs said an FAA representative inspected Romeo's high-performance aircraft Thursday and gave him a certificate to fly the two-seater, single-engine plane.

The sheriff confirmed only that several family members were at the airport. He did say friends videotaped the takeoff, but that did not know whether they recorded the crash.

"Their family members were watching the plane take off," Sheriff Todd said, "and they watched it go down."

The plane crashed a quarter-mile from the runway, shaving off the bark of a tree about 100 yards from the back of Mark and Carol Wilcox's Volney home. 

"It was like a real heavy thud. It vibrated the house," Carol Wilcox said. "I peeked through the blinds and there it was."

"I was on the phone with my husband," she said, and told him, "I have to go, I have to call 911, there's a plane down in the back yard."

A neighbor, Leonard Ostness, also heard the crash.

"We hear the airplanes flying around all the time," Ostness said. "This one seemed to be awfully loud. All of a sudden the engine was off momentarily, then it came on, then it went off, then bang. It just went 'whump.'"

Said Hodge's fiancée, "When they went up there, they were absolutely ecstatic. They both died doing something they loved. In their last moments they were absolutely ecstatic."

The accident remains under investigation.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.eaachapter486.com, www.lancairlegacy.com