Flew over the site today. My passenger took photos and didn’t do well at all. But this is the area.
The area to the left of this is the wildlife management area and is undeveloped. Most of the flight training happens over it since there is nothing to endanger. The small beach area at the right (Pine Island) is a popular place for pilots to then sight-see. As you can see it is a single road in and out. Wrecked airplane not there. Already recovered and shipped to Jacksonville, Fl to the NTSB facility for investigation.
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This is a bit more close-up.
And this is the best of what he took.
You can see how a lot of the road has a trees alongside. My buddy who was the chief instructor for many years until a couple years ago, talked to the instructor involved. What I’m going to say is word of mouth and has some conjecture. The instructor said it wasn’t fuel. Engine started to shake, miss and lost a lot of power. He pulled it back to idle then tried to put back in cruise power. Still very bad. He felt he the engine was going to completely fail so pulled it back to idle and since the road was the only choice that wasn’t in the water/wetlands tried the road. Caught the right wing on a tree.
My instructor buddy quizzed me on that and I said it sounded like a valve loss. He agreed. I said I have experienced one in a friends plane and we throttled back, but went for the airfield while trying solutions. We made it. He said that was right. He thinks the instructor gave up too early and should have tried to continue flying rather than immediately going for emergency landing. He asked what else about the picture. I didn’t notice, but he saw - no flaps. Why ?
His opinion is that low-time instructor didn’t make the best choices.
It will be interesting to see the final report.