I am posting the contents of a report of an accident
involving my friend Oly Olson and
his rotary Vari-Veggan that was posted on Van’s RV List by David
Domeier. Oly was using an Ellison Throttle body rather then
EFI and was working on sorting it out. I was attempting to assist him
over the phone and via e mail. He seem to have a problem getting the
Ellison to both idle well and still provide adequate fuel flow on the high
end. He was thinking of going to a different size Ellison to see if that
cured the problem. I have no further details at this time and
no indication of what the cause of engine stoppage might have been. He
had flown several times with the Ellison. Oly and his wife had stopped by
to visit me last year, a great couple.
I think it clear that having the right “reflexes”
are necessary in such a situation – because there is no time to think –
just react. Even so Oly clearly is a great stick man to get the aircraft
oriented up right before striking the trees.
The body of the report follows:
Ed
REPORT
“…
I received a cell phone call from a
friend at KSUS (St. Louis Spirit) this afternoon at about
1:35 pm. He was upset and could hardly say what had just seen. From his open
hangar he witnessed a mutual friend on down wind leg suddenly pitch up, roll
nearly inverted and disappear behind an adjacent row of hangers in what
appeared to be 45 degree dive. He said we just lost Olie.
Olie is one of the guys in a local group messing around with experimental
airplanes, he was trying to get the one and only metal built VariViggin to fly
with a Mazda rotary engine. This was the second or third time Olie had
attempted to fly the airplane in the past several years. It was a beautiful
machine copied from original drawings and built by a couple engineers in Canada and
painted like a Blue Angel F-18. Olie bought it and had it trucked in. We were
in total shock and not feeling well at all about this happening to a guy we
knew so well.
I was really in the dumps when the phone rang again about 20 minutes later. It
was the same friend calling to say local guys were reporting Olie was walking
around the wreckage which was up in a tree. I said, this is the best phone call
I have ever received, wow!
I had Olie's cell phone number and called him. Sure enough, he was alive and
well, and I said man am I glad to hear your voice. He said things happened real
quick and he would brief everyone as soon as possible, meanwhile he was waiting
for the FAA and also looking for a ride back to the airport. (he may not have been
aware of it, but there was quite a traffic jam developing on Airport Road as a
number of people saw him go in, one said he couldn't believe he was not killed,
all this on a local TV web site)
This evening I received more info on what happened. The engine quit at about 90
knots on down wind leg and the airplane pitched up immediately, probably due to
a high thrust line, speed dropped off to about 70, and the machine rolled
nearly inverted about that quick. Olie said "some basic instinct kicked in
- I pushed the nose down trying to recover some speed and kicked rudder real
hard trying to get the airplane to roll back up right" - it did just that
before it hit the trees. He climbed down with hardly a scratch.
We are thankful our friend Olie is with us tonight....”
__________________
Needless to say so are we. I sent Oly an e mail asking
that when he got things sorted out to provide any information he could about
what he though the cause of the engine stoppage was. One thing from this incident
shows that regardless of whether using and EFI system, a Carburetor or other
means of providing fuel – they all require sorting out and you can
encounter difficulties with any of them.
Ed Anderson
Rv-6A N494BW Rotary Powered
Matthews, NC
eanderson@carolina.rr.com
http://www.andersonee.com
http://www.dmack.net/mazda/index.html
http://www.flyrotary.com/
http://members.cox.net/rogersda/rotary/configs.htm#N494BW
http://www.rotaryaviation.com/Rotorhead%20Truth.htm