Quoting from today's AP newswire:

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For 18 years, Charles Cooke dreamed of flying the plane he slowly, lovingly
built on weekends in his garage. The day his dream finally came true, it
killed him. The 71-year old retired engineer died in a fiery crash Tuesday
on te plane's first flight. His dream of flying his own plane first took
shape in the garage of a home in the Santa Cruz mountains 18 years ago. He
took bits of plastic foam, glass fiber and wood and painstakingly crafted
them into a plane, spurning manufactured kits to build each piece his own
way. A Volkswagen engine provided the power. He planned to fly the yellow,
12-foot aircraft to the Experimental Aircraft Associatin Exhibition in
Wisconsin nexxt July to show off his pride and joy, and toak the talk of
pilots. But Tuesday, only seconds after he took off from Watsonville
Airport, something went wrong. The engine seized up, white smoke poured out
and the propeller stopped. The pilot tried desperately to loop back to the
runway but lost altitude too quickly. The little two-seater crashed through
a picket fence, slid down a hill and flipped over, smashing into the back
of Inez Tucker's barn and bursting into a ball of flame...
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Imagine, working 18 years on this project only to have the engine seize on
the first trial run. What a sad tale. Wonder what happened...

-Mark McCulley