His "irrepressible passion" for the skies was at the very core of his being, spanning most of his 57 years and drawing him into the close-knit aviation community.

Fellow pilot and Wedderburn Sport Aircraft Club president Bret Cavanagh was struggling to come to terms with the death of a man he described as "everyone's friend" on Wednesday.

He said Mr Greig's loss would be felt deeply throughout the small club.

"Robert was widely known and widely liked, it's a club of like-minded friends so he was a friend of everyone at the airfield and we'll all obviously miss him," Mr Cavanagh said.

"He was a really positive fellow and it will be noticed that he's not here."

A highly experienced and versatile pilot, Mr Greig could take the controls of almost any aircraft that took his fancy, Mr Cavanagh said.

"He was in fact a dual licensed pilot, he has a general aviation licence and has a Recreational Aviation Australia licence as well," he said.

"He has flown countless different aircraft over a long time, he was a highly competent pilot."

Word of the crash spread like wildfire through the small club on Tuesday night when emergency service crews contacted a member to inquire whether any of their pilots might be unaccounted for, Mr Cavanagh said.

He described the confusion and anguish sparked by that first flurry of calls as the gravity of the situation started to become clear.

"There's a degree of uncertainty at the start of anything like this where there's scant information and you start to pull all the pieces together," he said.

"It was one of those nights where you hope for the best in the outcome and hope that he's sitting there at the bottom of the airplane thinking, 'Gee that might have damaged the tyres' or something.

"We didn't know until [Wednesday] morning exactly what had happened, we'd assumed but we didn't know."

Mr Cavanagh said he wasn't at the airfield on Tuesday afternoon but out of habit kept a keen eye on the weather.

"The weather was substantially lifted and what I hear from others is that the weather was lifting here [at Wedderburn] and they decided they would go for a fly, but it sounds like the weather deteriorated as they went towards the escarpment," he said.

As for the exact cause of the crash, Mr Cavanagh said that would be revealed in time by the various investigating agencies and the coroner.