Hi Denis,

Just thought I would touch bases with you to see if you had gone ahead with that engine. We had one show up yesterday from Washington, jogged our memory about yours. Any news??

   <Marv>

Posted for "Conkey, Denis" <dconkey@roadrunner.com>:

I've had a couple of inquires about why this airplane flamed out and some of
the particulars of the accident.  I won't provide names, but this is what I
know, albeit second hand.

About December of last year, the airplane was being test flown by an
accomplished Lancair IV Turbine pilot out of Camarillo, CA.  The aircraft
was beginning its fourth flight and it had flown well up to this point.
This flight was going to be up to 25,000 feet to check the pressurization.
Just after takeoff, the tower called out some traffic and the pilot pitched
the airplane up and to the right in the climb out.  The engine then quite
(flamed out) at about 800 ft.

The pilot turned back toward the runway and S-turned to lose altitude as he
was now landing opposite direction to takeoff.  The pilot touched down at
Bravo which I think is about 1,500 ft from the end of the runway and I'm
sure he had some knots on the airplane.  Camarillo has about 3,000 ft of
overrun, but it is commonly blocked off for police training and other
activity that is conducted in the overrun area (subject of a long discussion
that I won't get into here).

The pilot did not think he could get the airplane stopped before the
barriers and chose to leave some speed on the aircraft and hopped the
barriers and landed in the overrun.  Unfortunately this maneuver chewed up
some overrun distance and there is a Convair CV-240 (guessing at type)
parked at the end of the overrun near the fence.  The pilot had stomped on
the breaks as evidenced by one of the tires being flat sided, but decided he
would not get it fully stopped before reaching the Convair so he maneuvered
to the left and this is when the left gear dug into some soft dirt on the
side of the overrun and the airplane flipped on its back.  Estimates of
speed when this happened were 30-40 kts.

As I said, this is not firsthand knowledge and there may be some
inaccuracies in the story, but I think it's close.

As for the reason for the flameout, here is what I know of the system
design.  Fuel is put into the wings and it then flows into the belly tank.
Fuel from the engine is fed from the belly tank through an accumulator that
was located in the baggage compartment.  Obviously, we will redesign the
fuel system.  Most of the data I've picked up so far points to having the
fuel come from the wings to an accumulator/tank that is near the engine.
This seems to make sense to me.  Comments welcome.

Denis
805-402-6197
N102M/N750PJ

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