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Hi David
thanks for the report. We were all stunned by the
tragedy that you witnessed first hand. Glad you were unscathed (physically
at least).
On a lighter note, sounds like you have every right to
wear that grin - pulled it out against some heavy hitters for
sure.
I guess your gearbox experience goes to show that
you never know where the limitations of equipment are - until you exceed
them
What are the odds of someone nearby (relatively speaking)
having and RD-1B that you could swap out. I recalled when I had my
gearbox nickle plated - they got just a bit inside the bearing bore and after
flying 10 hours after the plating my gearbox seized. Turned out the nickel
plating had flaked off the bronze bearing and jammed the prop shaft in the gear
bore - fortunately when I was trying to crank the engine to fly to
Florida. Tracy' bored it our at few thousands to get rid of the plating
and still flying with it. I presume you are going to ship it back to Tracy
for a tear down??
Sounds like a larger bottle for the water spray is in
order for the next race.
Ed
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 2:50 PM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Reno, RD-B failure, fix, and sad
times
Hi All,
I just got back from the Reno Air races last night. I was having
quite a week until the Tragedy occurred on Friday.
I qualified for the race on Tuesday at 229.3 mph pulling up to 2.5-g's at
times around the course. I was pretty happy with that, because I was not
last... I beat a glassair 1 with a "250 hp" 4-cyl lyc, and I beat an RV-8
with a 6-cylinder "310 hp." IO-540 engine. The rockets were solidly ahead,
especially Mark Fredrick and his F1 Rocket with his new wings - that look more
like the wings on the fast glass.
At the end of the qualifying heat I found that my prop would barely turn,
and after some cooling, it would not turn at all. Inspection showed that
the RD-1B prop shaft had seized and some of the planets had
overheated. Fortunately, by some fluke of good luck, Larry Childs and "EJ"
had a RD-1B sitting on a work bench a couple hundred miles away that they would
lend. Long story short, everyone pitched in, including EJ who made 2 round
trips to Heilsburg airport from Santa Rosa and Steve Senagal (winner of the F1
class and also pilot of the super-8 that I edged out in quals) flew me in his
super-8 to Heilsburg and I had a replacement gear box back at the airport by
dark. I worked into the night to re-install it, and was ready to race the
next day.
The failure may have been partly my fault. The gear box was sharing
an AN-4 oil line with the turbo so it is possible that it may not have been
seeing full engine oil pressure for most of its life (it had 600 hrs).
Also, it turns out that my oil temps have probably always been higher than
I thought. When replacing the gear box I gave it a dedicated oil
line from a take-off closer to the pump with a shorter AN-4 line. That
process required me to move my oil temp sensor from near the gear box into
the line that goes to the turbo. There is probably more flow going to the
turbo as now the oil temp seems to be much more responsive and climbs higher
that it ever had. I almost pulled out of my race on Wed because the oil
temp climbed to 210. That egged me to install a spray bar on the oil
cooler before Friday's race (which worked very well until I ran out of
water on the last lap and throttled way back). On the ride home, I again
saw oil temp much higher that I had previously noticed under similar conditions
(hot, high, and doing touch and go's), I was seeing up to 220 that would
quickly cool upon descent and reduction in power (consistent with what many
others have reported) were I used to see a max of 190 in similar conditions
cooling that occurred much more slowly on descent or transition to level
flight.
Then of course there was the tragedy. The plane arched right over my
head as my step dad and I watched the unlimited race from a 1/4mi away from the
impact site. Being a physician, I went to help with the casualties.
The site was pretty bad. As bad as anything I saw in Iraq (less the burns
- thank goodness the fuel never caught fire). Besides the fatalities,
there are a number of very severe life-changing injuries. Very somber and
surreal atmosphere.
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