Wow Chuck, Very sorry to hear.  I certainly know what you are going through.  I think it is even more worrisome that it just happened out of the blue like that.  It was more justifiable for me because of coolant issues.  But for you to have the same problem twice, without a known cause - and not even running a turbo.  That troubles me.

 

I wish I was in a position to offer some help - other than recent experience in tearing apart a rotary...

 

Dave Leonard

 

On 2/11/06, Chuck Dunlap <crayd@cableone.net> wrote:

Sorry I didn't make to Bill Eslick's for the Rotorfest, I missed by about one hour. About 30 miles north of San Angelo TX the RPM suddenly dropped and I could not restore it with any of my emergency procedures. GPS told me nearest airport was Robert Lee about 15 miles away. I headed there and landed without incident.

Turning the prop by hand shows almost zero compression in one rotor, indicating bad/broken apex seals, quite similar to my engine-out experience 2 1/2 years ago which caused a forced landing near the Grand Canyon. This time the vibration was not quite as bad, and the RPM dropped to around 4300 which was still not enough to maintain altitude.  I called my friend with a Glasair and he cam got me and took me home. I will have to find some time to build another motor and drive 12 hours back there and swap motors. Or I might drive there, remove the wings and trailer it back, have not decided yet.

My good friend/mentor/flight instructor is trying to talk me into going back to a Lycosaurus, and I have to think of some good reasons not to. Until I get the motor back and torn apart, I wont know what caused the failure, but I will post anything that I find.

 

Regards

Chuck Dunlap

RV-6 13B 535 hours