"I'm losin'. I'm losin' it again here."

This is the last thing Jerry Ballard, a prominent south metro home builder, told an air controller, just four minutes before his airplane slammed into the roof of a home in Coconut Creek, Fla. on Jan. 15.

Upon impact, the 57-year-old Coweta County native's Cirrus SR-22 broke into pieces and burst into flames shortly after he took off from the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport.

Ballard died instantly just two days before his birthday.

As news of Ballard's plane crash began to surface, so did rumors about what actually caused the accident. The questions are endless.

Did cloudy conditions contribute to his demise? Was the corporate aircraft's primary flight display that had been replaced three times since the aircraft was purchased the main culprit? Did miscommunication between Ballard and the air controller contribute to the crash? Did the fact that Ballard had limited experience operating on an instrument flight rules flight plan play a large role? Was it simply pilot error or was it all of the above?

Rick Charles, a flight instructor who heads up the aviation department at Georgia State University, rendered his opinion on the matter after reading the preliminary report Paul Cox of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, D.C. compiled. The accident was caused by a combination of different problems happening at the same time, he said.

"The first impression that I get is this is fairly a low-time instrument pilot and it appears to me that he was getting confused," Charles said. "When you look at [the report] it reads that way."

The controller told Ballard to turn left at 270 degrees, which is a heading of straight west, Charles said of the report featured on the www.ntsb.gov Web site. The controller spoke to another pilot of a plane numbered 785 and told him to turn right heading 90 degrees, which is a heading of east, Charles added.

"Later on, an unidentified voice similar to the pilot responded, 'Did you say a right turn to 270?'" Charles said. "The pilot did not identify himself so the controller repeated the instruction to the other pilot and identified the other pilot by tail number. From that point, the confusion just got worse."

Ballard and the controller appear to have a miscommunication problem when the controller shouts to Ballard, "You've turned the wrong way."

Ballard responded, "You told me to turn 90. I'm turning