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Hi all: Well my plane 73H is presently sitting on the ground 600 road miles south of me. I took off the visit my brother in Red Bluff California. If you have a Klamath Falls sectional, you'll see the terrain if pretty forbidding for a fair portion of the route. Since I'm paranoid about fuel I made 2 fuel stops on the way down. I NEVER run my wing tanks dry and don't even like the thought of watching the bobber plummet. The trip down went like clockwork, I passed by Shasta with a nice tailwind at 11,000+ and proceeded to RBL. The next morning my brother wanted to go flying and see his house from the air etc etc. We did so and next he wanted me to cross a ridge (We were now over some mountainous terrain) and look at a lake. After this we crossed another ridge and started following a valley. About this time the engine cut out !!!! I instinctively lowered the nose and pushed the throttle full on and the engine picked up. I was loath to touch the throttle since I now had power and started climbing and heading toward open terrain. The plane ran like a clock the rest of the way to the airport. What to do---I sump all three sumps before each and every flight and never find anything. In fact I use a mustard jar to sump so I get a fair amount out. Did I get a slug of water?? unlikely since I fueled up from a very busy FBO and had nothing in the sumps. However I was busy convincing myself that this is what it must have been. Stuck valve?? no the throttle application wouldn't free a stuck valve. Besides the engine cut out exactly as if I had pulled it to idle cutoff in flight. No it was fuel starvation. The next day I had convinced myself that I must have gotten a slug of something through the carb. Since I had 200 miles of nasty mountains to the north but only 100 miles of much lower mountains to the west, I decided to go home the coast route. Once over the coast I would have endless emergency landing fields in the sand above the water line. (In Washington we have the only official airport that is on the sand above the water line) In addition there were two airports along the route. I decided to remain near the Red Bluff airport until I was way high--like 12,000 + then head over the mountains. This way I'd give the plane a good workout and if it cutout again I'd be able to dead stick it at RBL (5,000' clear approaches) As I climbed through 7500, the engine cut out again. Since I was in a safe location and had plenty of altitude I could play with it a bit. Pumping the throttle brought it back to life. Well I knew I had enough fuel in the carb. bowl for the accelerator pump to pick up, so my thinking is toward something plugging up the main jet from time to time. It wouldn't be an air bleed since this makes things rich and pumping the throttle would have exacerbated the problem. The engine also seemed to have a bit of roughness that wasn't there before a sort of new vibration. I called on the CTAF and announced I had engine roughness and was going to land on 33 (opposite to the flow of traffic, but much more open approach). I decided I couldn't trouble shoot the problem there. I don't have enough confidence in another A & P from the FBO trying to find an intermittent fuel starvation problem in an unfamiliar airplane, so I didn't have it looked at there. I borrowed a car from by brother and drove home. (4 1/2 hours by air 12 1/2 hours by road) :-( I am going to put his car on a trailer, return to RBL and trailer 73H home. I am going to start looking and not stop until I have found something. The scary thing will be if I don't find anything. I think this problem has been developing for a time. I went to fly Young Eagles earlier this year and had "carburetor ice" The conditions were ripe for ice so I discounted it. Ron Burke was flying my plane a bit ago and also had some "carburetor ice" again conditions were ripe for ice, so nothing further was done. Some time back I was flying the instrument portion of Wings when the engine hesitated. I was under the hood and thought my friend Jim was giving me a hard time. Jim said he didn't tough a thing. It was a very momentary hesitation. Jim both a CFI and an A & P hadn't even noticed it. So that's my story. Needless to say I will miss the Walker fly-in which has been my high point of the year. :-( Cheers: Paul NC2273H ================================================================== TO UNSUBSCRIBE go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
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