Small Plane Crash In Central PA

Maybe he decided he could make the field with the gear up, maybe he forgot they were up. Folks in piston twins tend to get excited in a real OEI arrival. I was holding outside ADS traffic pattern, but monitoring the freq. while an old piston Commander was coming in single engine, emergency declared. He was so fast on the first approach, he had to miss, cause he couldn't land. It was severe clear, so he missed and actually made it around to final again. Guess he decided he was not going to miss again, so he slowed down. Tower called gear up on a .5 mile final, he put the gear down and stalled the airplane and crashed a .25 mile short and left of the runway in one of the very few empty fields left around the airport at that time. And survived! Sole occupant. Moral of the story for me was, once you have the field made, turn off the radio. Don't need another distraction. Never mind the moral that a piston twin with one running properly should have had no problem landing in the first place. And this guy walked away too. It is what it is, and it was what it was. As Tom Hanks would say in "Castaway", "I don't know why".

Well he hit the runway and walked. So he did 2 things right. He had fuel and proper airspeed.