The fault may have been in their stars — it would be easy to check with the help of a good astrologer — but amateur-built and otherwise non-type-certificated aircraft hit an especially rough patch in April 2014.
The run of bad luck actually began a couple of weeks earlier, on Feb. 16, when the 77-year-old unlicensed pilot of a RANS S-10 crashed inverted into an open field in Texas. He had announced over the radio that he was going to attempt a roll. Witnesses saw the plane roll inverted and go into a steep dive. The elevator moved rapidly up and down and then the left wing separated.
