I'm
running a Corvair instead of a rotary, but I thought you guys
would be interested in how I seem to be chasing Ed's gliding
time.
Monday, I
started the day with 3 hours of fuel, plus an
hour's reserve. The plane had been down for 2
months while I did some upgrades, and I went out
and did all sorts of interesting flying for 1.7
hours. The weather was beautiful, and the plane
was performing better than it ever has. I was
reluctantly headed in for the day, when the right
tank ran dry. I tried to switch, but the left
tank wouldn't come online. I called an emergency
on KTTA's frequency, since I had been circling
their airspace the whole time (just in case
something happened). It was nice to get that
support from other pilots over the air, even if
there was not one dang thing they could do. I was
12 miles out, with the airport clearly in sight.
I headed straight for it as I continued to play
with the selector switch. My dual electric fuel
pumps make a clackity racket when they're running
dry, so I kept moving the handle back and forth
hoping for the noise to turn into that deep
guttural sounds that lets me know fuel is
flowing. I got nuthin', and TTA kept climbing up
my windshield.
I
turned toward highway US421. It was covered in
cars, and it soon became apparent that it wasn't
going to happen either. I looked around, picked a
field, and set up a pattern to it. Initially, it
was a tobacco field, but I had come in to hot. I
had been afraid of extending the pattern to far.
There was a gravel road running beside it, so I
swung over, but it took a sharp right about 100yds
ahead. I didn't think I could make the turn, so I
banked left into an open field. The
clumps of grass were about 8" high. The nose
wheel caught, folded under, and I slid along on
the cowl.
I've
spent the past week pulling airplane parts out of the farmer's
field, and today I got about the business of determining what
happened. The gascolator had a few pieces of trash in the
bottom, but I'm not sure from where it came from. I took the
selector valve apart, and there didn't seem to be anything
going on with it. It turned smoothly, if not somewhat
stiffly. Then I played with the rod that connected the
selector handle to the valve. It was made from a 9" length of
threaded rod. An adaptor pinned it onto the valve's post.
Another adaptor connected to the inside of the handle.
Without turning an allen wrench pushed through the pin hole, I
could turn the selector handle 90 degrees. The rod just
twisted like bubble gum. Apparently, with two months of
sitting, the valve had gotten sticky enough that the rod gave
before it did.
I was
completely unharmed. I've suffered more damage getting the
plane out of the field than I did putting it there. The nose
gear, firewall, forward belly and left side skin are trashed.
The rebuild starts tomorrow with building a stand to hold the
engine while I work the aluminium.