|
Mark's recent incident and his mention of potential fire
hazard from same, got me to looking at photos of one of my Fire
Experiences.
For those of you new to the list, this happened to me on a
trip to visit kinfolk in Louisiana in June 2005- it’s a long, long story
starting with a rotor apex seal failure on way to Sun & Fun in April 2005, a
precautionary landing at a derelict airport, a hasty engine rebuild,
ignoring indications that something was amiss after rebuild, a compromised
Coolant "O" ring leading to engine miss on take off roll, leading to aborted
take off, leading to brake failure on taxi back, to off runway excursion into
ditch, etc.
My family came out to the airport to watch my departure
from Louisiana heading back to North Carolina in June 2005. My nephew,
Kevin Fontenot (now my Favorite Nephew {:>)) took a video of the entire
incident and his quick actions in getting a fire extinguisher precluded
potential loss of the aircraft - these are a few photos extracted from his
videos.
My first planned refueling stop was a small airport in
Northern Alabama which runway extended into a lake - so glad the incident did
not happened there!
Photos are pretty much self explanatory
I now use only the newer much higher flash point
83232 Brake fluid (compatible with the traditional 5056 brake fluid), I replace
the brake rotor with ones twice as thick (twice as much mass lowers the
temperature that a rotor will reach for the same heat input), and stainless
steel braided brake lines. Happy to say - all has worked out
well.
Ed
|