The former wife of David Behne, one of two men killed in the crash of a single-engine aircraft near Brentwood on Oct. 23, said he had just finished painting the plane at his private airstrip when he and a friend went on the ill-fated flight. 

"He wanted to get it up and running," said Shelley Rose, whose marriage to Behne ended in divorce in 2009.

His friend, Larry Strobel, like Behne a veteran pilot, just happened to be at the airstrip that day when they decided to take a brief flight, likely for pleasure, Rose said.

"But just why, we don't know. We'll probably never know," she said.

Rose confirmed on Thursday that the private memorial service for her husband with family and friends will take place on Nov. 17 at Behne's Funny Farm airstrip next to his home in Brentwood.

"There is no other place to have this than the place he loved," said Rose, whose 23-year-old son with Behne, Eric, is also a pilot.

The airstrip, next to Behne's 17-acre estate, includes 10 acres with two hangars, one where Behne housed 13 planes and the another where Strobel stored his two planes, Rose said.

A private memorial for Strobel, who lived on 10 acres a short distance west of the airstrip in Brentwood, is set for Nov. 9 at the Patriots Jet Team hangar at the Byron Airport in Byron.

Rose said that Strobel's family requested that they hold separate memorials.

Behne's service would probably include a flyover with several planes in a "missing man" formation when one plane will pull out to honor him, Rose said.

Rose recalled that about 10 years ago, Strobel "kind of walked over and got into flying" with Behne at the airstrip.

The two men shared a love for aviation with the "very, very close" private flying community in the East Bay region, she said.

Behne, 57, and Strobel, 56, both accomplished engineers, took off in the two-seat, home-built model Glasair III experimental plane on Oct. 23 and soon crashed into a farm field just south of Brentwood near Byron Highway, killing both instantly.

According to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board released Wednesday, the plane left Behne's airstrip at 2 p.m. that day and fell into the field about three minutes later.

The accident was still under investigation Saturday by the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration.