Friends say 26-year-old Lucas Campbell was a shining star in the Central Kansas aviation community.
"He was very good," airport manager Martin Miller says. "He put more pilots through the program and got them licensed as private pilots than we've seen in many years. He did a good job. He had a loyal group of students."
The wreckage of Campbell's one-seat ultralight sits in a grassy area just off the runway at Great Bend Municipal Airport guarded by Kansas state troopers.
"He had been out there for quite a bit of the day doing some flying," Trooper James Robinson says. "One of the witnesses says he was flying at a very low rate of speed. The aircraft elevated and then went straight down and crashed."
It was blustery with sustained winds of 20 miles per hour and gusts up to 37. But Campbell was no stranger to flying in those conditions. He'd been working as flight instructor for Centerline Aviation in Great Bend for a couple years. Prior to that, Campbell had worked for an aviation company at Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport.
The cause of the accident is under investigation.
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