Ooops. I posted photos from the airport restaraunt at Lakeland . Stopped there on the way back because of weather.

Guess I don't have photos of the on field restaraunt at Venice.

Sloppy of me.

Sounds very much like the pilot did everything possible to avoid people by landing in the waters edge.

Just strange they were able to so easily start the engine up and that the fuel was OFF in the cockpit at the time of the accident.

Just speculation, but sounds like he might've part of the way through the shutdown portion of the forced approach checklist. The article also says that reselecting tanks didn't solve the problem.

Oh oh. Engine dead in air, won't restart when fuel cells changed, but tests okay after the fact on the ground. Classic symptoms of carb ice.

One of the reasons my Nieuport will have "automatic" carb heat (which means it's always on).

And cutting off the fuel supply entirely before a forced landing is a prudent action.

I don't think carb icing. Hot weather that time in Florida. Less than 10 miles from takeoff. He was flying from his field to Venice and wasn't climbing to any altitude. So there wasn't any conditions to create icing. We're just speculating; so : long time since that plane had flown - maybe a water in fuel problem or air in lines that caused it to fail. That may explain why restart was so easy during investigation.