My trip to Oshkosh, summer of 2006.

On Saturday, July 22 at about 8:30AM, I took off from Arlington, Washington,
where my Cozy airplane is hangared - ultimate destination OSHKOSH. I stopped
in Bozeman, Montana for fuel and then went south to Cheyenne, Wyoming to see
my two sister's. Aside from getting the snot beat out of me by turbulence
over the mountains of southern Montana and northern Wyoming, the trip was
great. The plane performed as well as expected.

The next morning I fueled up and took off about 8:45AM heading east toward
Mecca - Oh no, I mean Oshkosh.

The plane flew great, just like the day before, and the air was calm and
smooth unlike the day before! Then, about an hour or so out of Cheyenne -
about 160 miles - I suddenly felt a small change in the vibration of the
airplane - there was "a disturbance in the force" ;-)  I didn't really know
there was anything wrong - but the plane was vibrating just a little
differently than it had for the previous 8 hours of flight. All the
instruments said everything was normal - oil and water temps were OK, oil
pressure OK, airspeed the same - just that "disturbance in the force" that
said something might be amiss.  I changed power settings and the engine responded fine but I did notice that
when I slowed down I thought I started to smell something - ever so faint.
Now for you non-Cozy airplane people, you have to remember - my engine is in
the rear of the airplane - so I can't see it let alone smell it. So my first
thought was FIRE!!! Not a good thing for "plastic airplanes"! I did a quick
90 degree turn and looked back at my track to see if there was a trail of
smoke. No smoke - whew! But I really shouldn't be smelling anything -
however faint that smell might be.

So I decided to get on the ground and take a look around. There was a little
airport directly ahead about 5 miles and since it was the closest thing
within 60 miles that had a runway even close to long enough, that was the
place to go. I landed and walked around the airplane and nothing was loose
and everything I could see through the openings in the engine cowling looked
OK. So I hopped back in and started the engine - it ran really rough. I
throttled up and it was missing a lot and then sputtered and died.  Now I
was convinced - there was definitely something wrong. I pulled out my meager set of tools that I had brought along - just in case
- and started to take the cowling off. Even before I could do that I noticed
some blistering on the cowling - and one big burned spot. These weren't
there when I walked around a few minutes ago. So I removed the cowl and
voila - the whole exhaust system had cracked off the engine! There are two short runners that come out of the engine and attach to a
large collection tube. Both runners were complete cracked off of the
collection tube. It had blown the collection tube out an inch or so from the
engine and it was only being held in place by some safety wire I had around
it and the braces to the heat shield that surrounded it. The hot exhaust
coming straight out of the rotors burned through the heat shield I had
around the large collection tube and fried all the ignition wires above the
exhaust area where the fuel injectors are located. It just melted them
together so they were all shorting one another. Needless to say, I'm glad I decided to land at an airport, however small and
remote, instead of being forced to find a country road or cow pasture.

-- Continued in Joe Hull's OSH Trip - Part 2-

Joe Hull
Cozy Mk-IV N31CZ (65 hrs - Rotary 13B NA) Redmond (Seattle), Washington