I had a partial loss of power and an off-field landing that did a fair amount of damage. There was no in-person investigation, just the usual form 6120.1, a phone interview, and some photographs.
The report on mine was generally accurate, as far as what was included and what was concluded. The sequence of some events was different from that which I had given in both my written and verbal reports, but not in a way that would change anyone's understanding of the accident.
I could see the errors in sequencing the events being material in different circumstances, but perhaps if that were the case, the investigator would have put more effort into getting it right.
In my case, the two cylinder, two stroke spit out a spark plug, so it was running on one cylinder. I confirmed that I had lost one cylinder, versus something happening to both cylinders, by the temperature drop on that cylinder's gauges. The report had the temperature drop and recognition of power loss in the other order, which would only really make sense if the power loss were gradual. Nobody needs gauges to alert them to a sudden loss of most of their power. I would guess that the prop was way too big for the reduced output, and the engine was only able to spin it enough to keep it from adding drag, and maybe put out a tiny bit of thrust. I'm guessing that the perceptible difference between what I had and a stopped prop would primarily be the sound.
I chose a dirt road through a pasture to land, as I knew that there would be no power poles, signs, traffic,...etc. I also figured that large rocks and similar obstacles would have been cleared away. The problem was that the road was on an up-slope that I was not able to detect before I was committed. I had already done everything that I could to get as slow as possible without stalling, so there was no chance of following the terrain back up the slope.
I had chosen a stretch just past a gate, in order to get the longest possible straight stretch of runway (remember that I didn't perceive the slope yet when I made that decision). As a consequence, I couldn't trade my last few feet of altitude for speed and then flare up the slope a bit. All I could do was fly to the center of the wreckage. I did drop the nose slightly when I knew that I would clear the gate, but didn't get enough speed to make much of a flare, as we are talking about an 8-10' "dive", at most.
The landing was 3-point, with enough of a vertical component to tear the gear up and bend some 4130 tubes in the area around the gear, but with enough forward speed that there was still a fair amount of lift, and the impact wasn't too damaging to the soft and fragile pink thing inside.
