That was a good landing, Jeff! Thank God
you were not injured.
I am curious to hear what you find about
the fuel pumps. I don’t suppose you noticed anything about the oil
pressure prior to or during this time? It seems you had very little time and
made a lot of right decisions.
Bill B
From: Rotary motors in
aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of Jeff Whaley
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 6:52
AM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] One rotary
down and out
Sorry to post bad news guys but need to share
this with you form a safety perspective.
Anyway what happened ... engine failure, prop
stopped went into a corn field and flipped over.
I have 2 fuel pumps; decided to turn 1 off, when I did the engine quit - pump
back on okay - repeated same result.
5 miles from home base I headed back, radioed inbound, 1 minute later I
thought I smelled fuel and another 1 minute later the engine quit. Trimmed the
airplane, mayday and glided straight ahead. Lots of corn and a few soya bean
fields around but didn't want to land in them, saw a gravel road and turned to
line up on it, pulled on full flaps for minimum landing speed, when I turned
final there was a huge elm tree on the right edge at my expected touch down
point, so at 100' I turned left into the field which was corn ... everything
was going great until I hit the corn. Thankfully the seats belts and
shoulder harnesses did their job; upside down I released the belts and got out
of there fast.
Walked out, phoned police and after they
arrived authorities wanted the ELT shut off so we walked back to the airplane;
when I got there I saw oil all over the bottom of fuselage. Checked engine and
found the oil-out line (push-lock connector) hanging loose. I expect what
happened is when the engine quit and restarted those 2 times that sent a burst
of oil pressure and blew the hose off ... I pushed it back on and it would not
pull back off again. I had heard some guys were putting heat shrink or other
back-up systems on these connectors; I wish now I had used a simple stainless
worm clamp. Engine and redrive will be toast, airplane is substantially
damaged ... I'll salvage what I can.
Jeff
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