I am sad to report the loss of Alex Vagner, owner/operator of Tango Gyro today. He died in one of his new machines during a routine rotor-tuning flight. The cause of the fatal crash is under investigation and I urge patience rather than speculation until the NTSB report is released.

Alex was a good friend and credit to the gyroplane community. His loss will impact us all, directly or indirectly.

I heard Yesterday evening, I cannot believe it I am devastated, We all just had lunch together on Friday.
Prayers for the family during this time.....Alex was a great guy, I liked him very much, He will be missed.

Very sad to hear. Condolences to his family.

I have only met Alex a few times and enjoyed his company.
So sorry for the loss of a Happy Funny man.

I remember first meeting Alex at Bensen Days 2016 when TANGO & TAGNA had our debut manufacturer booths at the fly-in! at all the fly-ins since I enjoyed visiting with him & applauded the solid progress he made in refining his product ...it was a delight to spend time discussing his product & he was always so happy & joyfuly enthusiastic! His demo flights with the aerial Ag-sprayer unit at Mentone this year was a sight to see! All the TANGO owner's have only great things to say about their machines & customer service ....which is a BIG nod to his straight-arrow character!
This is truly a devastating loss for our US gyro market ....the TANGO machines filled a great niche with the powerful Yamaha & attractive price-point!
I'm so glad that Alex was honored at all the many gyro fly-ins that he attended this year with multiple awards!
I'm so profoundly sad to lose another gyro brother who contributed so much & my heartfelt empathy & condolences to Katarina & Paul!

So sad. Hopefully his Tango legacy will continue.

Absolutely devastating news. Such a great man! Condolences to the family.

Funeral services for Alex Vagner will be held:

Friday 11/08/2019 at 1:00PM EST at
Fischer Funeral Care
3742 Chamblee Dunwoody Road
Atlanta, GA 30341

So sorry to hear this....
Never met him, but like the tango 2.
Condolences to those left behind

Miss my buddy!

We all miss the big Russian Bear.
Damn....just damn.
I kept looking at the photo of the crash site......
The little bit I know (not to speculate) that sure looks like high-speed impact and not in control of the machine at all.
Medical or mechanical....either way that wasn't just a simple engine out or an opps I messed up thing!
For his and his family's sake, I hope it was a medical!
Like my big brother's

...I concur Gabor ...the similar wreckage profile was too similar to Jim's ( minus the fire)... makes me suspect medical issue as top suspect!

Unfortunately a clear medical finding is often overshadowed by the BFT of impact!

Sure hope there are good answers forthcoming for his family!

The NTSB results will be a little while in coming. The mechanical inspections are complete. I believe that the environmental aspects have been considered. All the results, mechanical, environment and pilot have to be collated and reviewed, perhaps edited and reviewed again. It is a time-consuming process, but it is moving along. I am hopeful that the determination will be clear-cut and not ambiguous. Meanwhile, it is best not to speculate.

The funeral yesterday was well-populated by the gyroplane community from many states. It was a Russian Orthodox service (in the Russian language) with a brief explanation of the proceedings in English and some reflections of his life by Paul and a few others.

I will miss him. He was a great friend.

I wrestled with the " hope it was medical" for a long while after Doug's accident.
Then again after Marks. Both seemingly healthy and both good pilots who have been in the air.
As I study all the details of all the accidents I read of, I am less and less led to believe these friends of ours are being struck by emergent medical situations, and are instead experiencing some catastrophic loss of control.
Statistically speaking if there were medical issues than we would be losing our friends to motorcycle and car wrecks as well...and that folks just ain't happening.
No, I'm not suggesting I know what it is, but the numbers don't add up.
For such a small community to have such a high death toll, there is something else at play.
Back before they started putting props behind us, did they have the same death toll? My research says no.
Is it when they started to use cables instead of push rods? Or maybe trim springs? I don't know.
But hoping it is a medical reason is a salve we apply to our conscience to help us make sense of our loss.
I don't mean for this to upset anyone, but instead to reflect on any possible way to improve the safety record for our community. I have lost more friends to gyroplanes than EOD brothers in combat zones defuzing IEDs.
Let that sink in.

My own situation that I repeat often is how close I came to a catastrophic failure that I am sure would have resulted in a similar accident crash site picture. Due to a build oversight, the rear bolt holding the horizontal control rod along the frame in place was not torqued when inserted. It loosened completely, and I was saved completely by the fact that the the vertical frame(mast) was close enough that the bolt was too long to actually fall out. The other thing that saved me is that I was in the pattern when it happened and the bolt staying partially in place allowed me to keep a reasonable glide approach with the stick full back as far as it would go. I know there may be a tendency to 'hope' it was a medical issue for the family's sake, though I don't really see any logic in this. None of us or our machines are perfect. We have all been guilty of mistakes, and weak spots can present in any machine. In addition to the initial fault in my situation of not torquing the bolt - I did not complete that part of the build, but I was still responsible as the official builder. Ignorance is no excuse. But I was also guilty of a subpar preflight which likely would have caught a loosening bolt. I also think it is a design issue as I think that bolt should be safety wired in the MTO. I drilled a new bolt head and did exactly that when I replaced it. The most important thing for everybody's benefit is to establish in the most detached and truthful way what happened. At this time establishing blame is much less important than trying to make sure that it does not happen again to other pilots and their families.

Your story sounds eerily similar to something that happened to me. Really just dumb luck that me and my buddy were able to notice something amiss on the ground in time to prevent a catastrophe.
It is this reason why as a self reliant pilot I hate commercial air travel! If I can't find a small but crucial mistake and I am prestarting a tiny simple exposed aircraft, what chance is there of finding one on a huge complex aircraft when the set of eyes isnt even riding on the plane!

It appears the initial FAA report posted on RWF, showed no evidence of any control component failure; so Chris's concern with some type of health issue would seem the most likely scenario.
About 2 years ago a good friend of mine had a heart attack while flying. Fortunately he was able to land and get emergency medical help. Amazingly his heart function which was 1/3rd of normal immediately after the attack, is back to normal, and he is back flying.

I think under the circumstances this could be the "good" part in a "I have good and bad news for you" scenario.