Hi everyone- I was hoping I could again tap the wisdom of those in the group.
This past weekend, I was working with my instructor in my Coupe. Saturday was balmy, slightly gusty, but otherwise a nice day. We were doing touch and gos. Once while we were a couple of thousand feet up, my instructor demonstrated the "mush stall" characteristics of my airplane. However, when the airplane "mushed" down, it "sputtered" momentarily before regaining power. I think that the extrememe up-angle of the nose caused the gravity feed fuel to stop flowing. Question #1: What do you think this could have been caused by? We continued to fly without incident for another hour, but we didn't try a stall. The following day, Sunday, we decided to go at it again. Another balmy, relatively humid day, not too much wind. We warmed the engine up for about fifteen minutes, and ran it up on the runway. Everything seemed fine, although the previous owner had recommended letting the C-85 take twenty minutes or more to warm up. Everyone I have talked to says that is excessive, though. Then we punched it, and headed down the runway. I noticed that the RPM was about 2300 firewalled. It seemed to me that something didn't quite seem right, and I brought this to the attention of my instructor, but he said that was normal and the RPMs would jump when we hit the air. We took off, and were about 150 feet off the runway, when the engine started to lose power. Jockeying the throttle didn't seem to do anything, so it was cow-pasture city. Luckily, we landed in the field with no trouble, despite it being a little bumpy, and muddy on top of that. Plane and pilots OK! However, what was the deal with the power? I had an A&P come out and we started the plane, ran it up, and did a mag check. The left mag dropped too much, and the engine popped once when we did so; the right mag seemed to be OK. Everything was running fine the previous day, despite the gravity-thing. Question #2: Any ideas? Could this be plug fouling? Or water? Carb Ice? (doubtful) The engine is practically new, and the previous owner had experienced no such problems (of course! haha) OK, so now I have this airplane in a Cow Field. With Cows. We need to get it OUT of the field. However, most of the field is quite muddy, except for the top of the hill (very slight incline). We can't fly it out, because of the problem with the mags. So we are going to have to roll it out someway. Naturally, it clouded up, rained like hell, and now it is clear, although cold and windy. I am thinking that I can "taxi" it through the field, despite the fact that it is producing 2 inch deep ruts where the wheels are. At the edge of the field, near a road, there is an empty lot where normally a home would be, but in this case, it is the only way I can see getting the plane out without removing wings, etc. There is a mound, like a levee, which must be crossed before getting into the empty lot. The empty lot is like a marsh---way worse than the field. Question #3: Any recommendations for getting the plane over the "levee" (really not that severe, and not that big) and through the 100 or so feet of rain-sodden turf? Any recommendations would be helpful. Needless to say it was an exciting weekend, not entirely by choice! Thanks! Zach
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