CROYDON — Federal aviation authorities are investigating what led to a Sunday night helicopter crash in Croydon that claimed the life of a New Hampshire pilot with five decades of flying experience, officials said Monday.

Carl Svenson, 73, of Loudon, N.H., was found dead at the scene by rescue workers when they located the downed helicopter in a wooded area in Croydon at around 2 a.m. Monday, only a couple miles away from where he had departed from a private heliport at around 7:30 p.m.

The helicopter had taken off from a property in Croydon owned by Ray Newcomb, co-owner of JBI Helicopter Services in Pembroke, N.H., for whom Svenson had flown since the early 1980s and was en route to a job site in Rhode Island, according to authorities.

Weather conditions on Sunday evening were “clear and cool,” said Jason Rook, chief of the Croydon Fire Department, which responded to the scene along with fire departments from Springfield and Grantham, New Hampshire Fish and Game and a state police helicopter unit overhead.

Rook said the several-hours gap between when the helicopter took off and when search and rescue personnel were called out was because the aircraft was not reported missing until it failed to arrive as scheduled.

“He took off and did not land at his destination. Then someone said, ‘Hey, he never showed up.’ And they went back and looked at the radar and where they lost communication with him. That’s why it was not until a couple hours later they realized that something had gone wrong,” Rook said.

JBI, founded in 1983 and with offices in Pembroke and in Abbeville, La., performs pipeline and power line patrols, agriculture, forestry, and firefighting services in the Northeast and around the country, according to the company’s website.

Kurt West, president of JBI, said the helicopter took off from a “registered New Hampshire heliport.”

West said he was the search team member who first found the downed helicopter.

He declined to comment further, pending the investigation and “out of respect for the widow and family” of the deceased pilot, he said.

JBI’s Facebook page identifies Svenson as originally from Sanbornton, N.H. He held airplane, helicopter and seaplane pilot licenses.

Steven Tybus, who lives on Indian Point Road and whose property abuts the Newcomb property, said he was outside with his dogs in the early evening when he saw the helicopter take off from where it was stationed “behind the barn.”

“I saw him warming up, elevate about 100 feet and aim north,” Tybus said in an interview on Monday, noting that he occasionally has seen helicopters arriving and departing from the property. “The lights were flashing. Everything sounded normal. It was all kind of routine.”

Tybus said he did not hear the crash and was unaware of it until the following morning when he learned about it on social media.

An investigator from an Ohio office of the National Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to arrive at the crash scene on Tuesday, said Sgt. Heidi Murphy with New Hampshire Fish and Game. The NTSB, which is the lead agency on aircraft crashes, will be assisted by the New Hampshire Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Aeronautics and the Federal Aviation Administration.

A New Hampshire medical examiner also was dispatched Monday morning to the crash site, Murphy said.

Murphy said that helicopter had been parked at Newcomb’s property and the pilot had arrived there by ground transportation.

“He was just there to pick it up and relay it to another point,” Murphy said of Svenson’s remains.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.