The pilot and owner of the homemade plane was David Arthur Silfvast, 62, of Salt Lake City, an amateur plane builder who walked away from a similar crash in a homemade plane years before.

The passenger was David Fay Edgerly, 71, of Lecanto, Fla. Silfvast took off from Salt Lake County Airport No. 2 in West Jordan on Tuesday morning, said Utah County sheriff's Sgt. Tom Hodgson.

The crash was reported Tuesday at about 11 a.m. by pheasant hunters who said the plane failed to come out of a dive.

The plane caught fire on impact and charred ground along Long Ridge in the West Canyon area near Cedar Fort - which is west of Utah Lake near Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain.

Only charred wreckage remained, but Utah County sheriff's deputies found a plate listing Silfvast as the builder.

A mechanic at Hill Air Force Base, Silfvast had survived a similar crash in May 1997, when something went wrong with his plane as he returned to the same airport in West Jordan. Silfvast performed an emergency landing in a wheat field, and though the plane flipped during the landing, he walked away unhurt.

"It's not damaged that bad, really,'' he told The Salt Lake Tribune at the time. "It'll take a little time, but I'll fix it again."

He had spent about 15 years building the single engine, two-seat Starduster Too stunt biplane from scratch.

The plane that crashed on Tuesday could have been the same one, or possibly the same model, but the wreckage was too badly charred to clearly identify it.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation by the FAA.

lwhitehurst@sltrib.com