Jan. 8, Upland, Calif. / Pitts S1X

At 10:34 PST, a homebuilt Pitts S1X crashed while performing an aerobatic routine at an airshow at Cable Airport. The pilot was killed. Witnesses said the pilot dove into the aerobatic box, performed three snap rolls to the right and recovered. The second time he entered the box, the pilot performed three snap rolls to the left, and, as he rotated about of the way around on the third to fourth snap roll, he seemed to experience what witnesses called some sort of problem. The pilot arrested the snap roll and transitioned into an upright flat spin. At that point, the pilot pulled the power back to idle. In the second turn of the spin, the airplane was about 200 to 300 feet agl. The witnesses said the pilot did not have sufficient altitude to recover.