What happened
On March 17, 1982, a weather briefer informed the pilot that all of Texas would be under instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) on the morning of March 18. There was no record of a flight plan filed by the pilot of N8988P, and the departure time from Kingsville could not be determined. The aircraft wreckage was found the next morning, 1.5 miles southeast of the airport in a plowed field.
The investigation
Examination of the vacuum-driven attitude gyro after the accident revealed evidence of pre-impact malfunction. Testing revealed that the gyro would not erect properly due to dirty spindle bearings. No other pre-impact malfunctions or failures were found.
Findings
The pilot of N8988P logged a total of 2.6 hours of instrument flight in the six months previous to the accident. The attitude indicator failure was attributed to dirty spindle bearings in the vacuum-driven gyro.