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Hi Ken,
You were extremely lucky that day and also to get a new engine out of
it. However, what I was talking about was losing a piece of one blade,
not
the entire prop. My dad and I lost a prop many years ago from his old
'Nicholas Beesley'. We had just broken ground and luckily the grass strip
was long enough that he was able to get it back down on the ground and we
used the 'farm fencing' to stop us.
Let's say you have an 'unnoticable' scratch about 6 inches from the
tip. This scratch starts corroding and turns into a crack. One day when
you're out flying that 6 inch piece departs from that blade. Think about
the 'out-of-balance' vibration.
I say a Formula I racer lose an engine (it didn't stop running, it
actually fell off the mounts) at the Reno Air Races one year. He had a
safety cable around the engine between the cylinders and fastened to the
airframe. His CG was terrible and he made an unbelievable approach but he
walked away from it. The following year the cable was mandatory on all
Formula I's. It definately saved his life because they don't wear
parachutes in that class. They don't get high enough for a chute to open.
L8r,
Bob Saville
kjl wrote:
> Bob
>
> I lost the prop on my 46 ERCOUPE in Jan. 1996, see NTSB accident report
> number BFO96LA038
> We landed in a snow covered field and the nose wheel collapsed and we
> did minor damage to the plane. We recovered the prop in deep snow one
> week later and we are still flying the Coupe with this prop after it had
> been checked at the Sensnich factory in Lancaster PA.
>
> There was no stability problems to speak of, but the hot oil started to
> gush out and cover the windscreen. I saw the tach go around the dial
> three or four times before I could shut the engine down. It sounded like
> a gas turbine and when we tore the engine down we found that the piston
> rods were stretched 1/8 of an inch and the rest of the engine was trash.
>
> It had a happy ending because the shop who overhauled our crankshaft
> bought us a new engine and it's still flying.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ken Lennox N87424
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