[DanielBMarkham]

Another good one. From what I've heard, he was a good pilot. The switch was mounted in an awkward and non-standard position. (Behind the pilot's seat, I think?)

Aside from the downdraft issue, running out of gas at altitude in VMC can be very interesting, but it doesn't have to be fatal. Even in heavily-forested areas, in a small plane you can put out the barn doors and decrease your horizontal speed quite bit, especially with a headwind.

We had a guy in Virginia in the 90s, I think. He was a student-ish pilot in a 150 that ended up in IMC (fog) in the heavily-wooded mountains while running out of gas.

He slowed the plane down as much he could, somehow kept the wings level, and ended up on somebody's back deck. Walked away. That's not guaranteed, of course, but in general planes are crash-rated based on flying directly into something. It's the failure to maintain control that kills many times more than the crash itself. Heck, they used to have shows where people crashed planes on purpose.