Updated Tuesday: A 54-year-old pilot, Paul Splan of Fresno, died Thursday night from injuries he sustained when he crashed his ultralight plane into an orchard across from New Jerusalem Airport — about a quarter-mile south of Durham Ferry Road.

His plane flew under low-slung power lines and crashed into the base of a tree, which folded back the wings and trapped the pilot. His daughter, Allison Splan Lloyd, said Monday that there was a gear malfunction on his plane and that he'd died on impact.

Investigators said Splan had arrived at the airport around 6:30 Thursday night to join a group of hang gliders

who'd planned to shoot a video. Splan was to tow the hang gliders into the

air for the shoot.

Instead, he took off alone from the rural airport sometime between 9 p.m. and midnight Thursday, despite the darkness, said Germane Friends, Tracy Fire Department division chief.

Lloyd said that her father died doing something he loved on a night with a full moon.

"It was his favorite time to fly," she said, "because the world looked so glorious by the light of the full moon."

She said her parents were the first hang gliders to fly off Glacier Point in Yosemite, and her father had 30 years of experience as a pilot. 

Several hang gliders reportedly camped out close to the airport Thursday night, and at 7:38 a.m. Friday, they walked into a rural fire station a mile from the crash to ask for help in locating the missing pilot. Chief Friends found the body seven minutes later.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department and Federal Aviation Administration continue to investigate, and a coroner's report hasn't been released.