Helicopter pilot survives 400-ft. fall

CEDAR PARK, Texas (KXAN) - A Cedar Park man walked away from a 400-foot fall without any injuries Sunday. The miraculous escape happened after the rudder of his homemade helicopter ripped apart mid-air, causing him to barrel into a wooded area near the intersection of Post River Rd. and Yukon Cir. just after 3 p.m.

The remains of the wreckage scatter across a wooded area so close to 9-year-old Bailey Wyche's home, there was no need for a zoom lens.

"Well, the helicopter was kind of all slanted up like this," Bailey described. "There was pieces of it everywhere kind of, and the propellers on top were all like damaged and stuff."

Bailey's dad Brian said the photos his son snapped cannot capture the feeling driving up on the scene.

"(It was) sticking in nose first," Brian said, "and the tail was stuck up in the trees."

Just moments before arriving home, the helicopter piloted by one of their neighbors tumbled into the trees below.

"He was probably aiming for the road, but the trees were probably a better idea," said L.J. Miller, another neighbor. "It's a little softer. Better to land in a bushy tree than a hard surface."

The pilot was already close to his landing point, with a private airport about 150 yards down the street from the crash site. Neighbors say he took off from there almost every weekend for at least the last six years. In the airport's history, this was the first accident ever.

"When you live in a neighborhood with an airport," Brian said, "sooner or later, something's going to happen."

Brian said his family is one of the few in the neighborhood without an aircraft stored there. The close call missed his home, and somehow the pilot came away without any injuries. Still swept up in the scene, he said his son isn't letting the accident scare him. After ten years with the same thought hovering overhead, Brian said he has also learned to live with it.

"You know, the airport was here long before we moved in," he said. "If we're scared, maybe we should move and not the airport."

As of Sunday night, the Texas Department of Public Safety had not released the name of the pilot.