Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board spent a second day scouring the forest near Sisters on Tuesday, collecting evidence from a plane crash that killed two men Monday morning.

Patrick Franzen, 52, of Bend, and Harry League, 68, of Chicago, died when League’s Lancair IV-Propjet went down about eight miles south of Sisters. Franzen had flown fixed-wing medical transport flights for AirLink for the past decade and was in the plane as a flight instructor, but investigators have not determined who was piloting the plane at the time of the crash.

Kurt Anderson, the NTSB’s investigator in charge, said the men took off from the Redmond Airport at 9:04 a.m. Anderson said radar tracking data indicate that the plane encountered trouble at 10:17 a.m.

The plane was in cruise flight at about 10,500 feet just before the accident, Anderson said, then climbed up to 11,700 feet. Within a few seconds of reaching that altitude, the plane “began a rapid descent all the way to the ground.”

Anderson said the pilots were not in radio contact with local aircraft control officials prior to the crash. However, the Redmond tower received a brief — 9- to 10-second — communication just as the plane was going down.

Air traffic controllers heard voices in the background but no remarks apparently directed at them, Anderson said. Investigators plan to review a tape of the incident to determine if it came from the Lancair.

Investigators moved the fuselage of the plane to a hangar in Redmond on Tuesday and expect to transport other pieces found at the crash site today. Anderson said investigators will be studying the wreckage for the next few days, but a full report into the cause of the crash is still likely months away.

Doug Meyer, marketing and sales director for Redmond-based Lancair International, said Franzen was very experienced at flying turboprop aircraft like the Lancair IV-Propjet as a result of his experience with AirLink. Though he never worked for Lancair, the company would sometimes recommend Franzen to provide flight instruction to pilots who had recently bought a Lancair airplane, Meyer said.

Lancair is assisting the NTSB in the investigation, Meyer said, and does not believe the crash suggests there is any defect in the construction of its planes.

“When you have an airplane that’s been around for years and there’s hundreds of them in the field, there’s something anomalous,” he said. “If you don’t see them routinely having in-flight emergencies you assume they’re safe — something very odd and abnormal would have to happen for an odd and abnormal occurrence to occur.”

Friends and co-workers of Franzen remembered him as an enthusiastic pilot and musician who loved classic cars and roller coasters.

Darin Durham, the director of the emergency department at St. Charles Bend, met Franzen when he answered a Craiglist ad. A guitarist, Franzen had posted an ad for a drummer to fill out his band. It was only after the two men started playing music that Durham discovered they’d worked together for years.

“He loved music. He was a great guitar player, and just from what I knew of him, he was a great family guy. His family meant everything to him and took precedence over everything,” Durham said.

Franzen soon learned that he was a pilot as well, Durham said, and would often invite him to go flying or share stories of his exploits in the air. One incident from a few years ago stands out, Durham said:An electrical problem filled Franzen’s cockpit with smoke and forced him to make an emergency landing.

“Pat was telling me that when he was landing the plane, he had the door open just so he could see out,” he said. “You have to be a good pilot to do that.”

Franzen leaves behind a wife and two teenage daughters.

Carl Natter, the lead fixed-wing pilot at Metro Aviation and Franzen’s supervisor in his work for AirLink, praised Franzen’s flying skills in a news release issued by the company.

“Pat was a dependable pilot,” Natter said. “The crew appreciated his dedication to standardization and doing the same thing the same way every time. They knew what to expect.”

Natter recalled working with Franzen when their flights were based out of La Grande, and the pilots’ running joke that Franzen’s habit of hauling his guitar and a remote-control helicopter to and from La Grande required “two days to move out there and two days to move back.”

“He enjoyed everything,” Natter said. “He will be missed.”