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------ Forwarded Message
From: ACRE <rotaryeng@earthlink.net>
Organization: ACRE
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 06:00:02 -0700
Subject: Sad story
> Ian Beadle wrote:
>
> Hi Paul
>
> I'm afraid I won?t be contributing much to ACRE in future as I crashed the RV
> last weekend. Fortunately no injuries but the plane is a right off.
>
> We had flown in to a vintage car show at a country town and used a marked off
area of a paddock as an airstrip. On climb after takeoff at about 2000 ft
> coolant sprayed over the windscreen and temperatures started to climb. I
elected to return to the strip lose height where we were, and do a straight in
> approach. I was so worried about being too low and too slow that I started the
approach too high and too fast.
>
> I sideslipped to lose height but when I should have been concentrating on the
roundout I was distracted by the proximity of the fence and trees. The result
> was a hard landing the nose wheel dug in, and the plane flipped over. On a
hard strip I would have got away with it.
>
> Now the reason why.
>
> The lower hose from the water pump blew off. The reason was that I had fitted
a thick walled pipe from the engine to the pressurised overflow bottle. The bore
> of the pipe was too small to take a large flow of water as the engine heated
up.
>
> It has been my practice to allow the engine to reach operating temperature
after taxiing. On this occasion we had to taxi over the rough surface to get to
the
> strip which was a bit soft. I had to use more power than normal to taxi and
take off . The rapid expansion of coolant was too much for the overflow pipe and
> coolant pressure blew the pump hose off. The EIS was set to alarm low pressure
not high.
>
> Ian Beadle
I am really sorry to hear that Ian. I am also very very glad that you and
your wife are
OK. Is there nothing that can be salvaged?
Maybe in awhile you will feel like building another one.
Paul Lamar
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter. Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site. http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/
Copyright 1998-2003 All world wide rights reserved.
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