-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of tommlllly Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 11:06 AM To: Ed Burkhead Subject: Re: I lost my prop in flight
I was flying up to mn for my LSA CFI refresher renewal to meet with the examiner. I was fortunate that it did happen over the airport, but the whole flight I always had my spot picked out for such an inconvenience. I was over the top at 2200msl to check the wind and at that time I throttled back and added carb heat and the engine had a big drop in rpm. I then added a little power and she really wanted to quit so I pushed carb heat back in and the engine just wanted to die, and at that time I couldn't see the prop spinning and I thought, did I lose my prop or is the engine dead? Remember it all happens fast, I figured whatever it was I needed to do an emergency landing, so I flew left down wind of the runway I intended to land on rwy31, and decided I couldn't make it so I pointed the nose down steep to build speed and banked her hard to the left to land on runway 020. After that intense turn I kept my glide speed at 100mph and I was lined up with the runway in front of me and made a beautiful landing. I rolled the plane to the side of the runway to a stop and said now lets see if I have a prop or what, sure as shit the prop was gone. I got out of the plane and as I was walking to the front of the plane I thought, I need to find a prop to stick back on her to fly it home and that it's not a big deal. I got to the front of the plane to check out the prop flange and it was gone too. Crank broke right at the seal. The last couple of flights I had noticed I had been getting a little oil on the front of the cowl and I just figured that it was the seal leaking a little, but now I'm thinking it was a crack in the crank! I just bought this coupe a couple months ago and I only put about 8hrs on it and that's all the time I have in ercoupes. The engine had just been overhauled around 13hrs ago? The ercoupe is not a bad gliding plane! It does drop fast but very controllable with no funny characteristics. All I can tell everyone is if you have an engine out just fly the plane and don't panic. Visualize a regular landing and land it, don't seconded guess yourself because you will lose a lot of altitude in a hurry! I was fortunate that it did happened when it did above the airport, but it still could have been a bad deal if I hadn't use my experience correctly. I have 1000+ hrs in flying Ultralights and LSA aircraft and I teach engine out procedures all the time, so it was no big deal for me just a major inconvenience! Was I scared? Not a bit, I was to busy putting my experience to work :) I plan to either fix it or sell it the way it is where it is! If anyone is looking for little project,give me a call and we can talk. We flew around the area to look for the prop,but no luck! Tom Mullally 712-540-1665
