First engine out but I still made the Fly-in!

[C5Engineer 1170]

Well many of you have probably been waiting for this story.... Today I took off at 730 am bound for a taildragger fly-in 65 miles away. Plane was climbing like a homesick angel.. I made a quick crosswind and quick downwind while still climbing. At 700 ft passing the approach end of the runway I took off from she lost rpm. I pumped the throttle twice and it just kept bogging so I committed, hit the mags, shut off the fuel, and tightened my seat belt. I turned base immediately and unfortunately I had a 15kt headwind. An Avid deadstick with a big headwind glides like a ROCK. I went from thinking I was going to land halfway down the runway to wondering if I was going to make the runway in a 10 second span. I made the runway and the landing was uneventful. Just as I rolled to a stop I hit mags and key and it fired right up. I taxied to my hangar and pulled the cowling.

 

Thought for sure it was a fuel issue...yes the gas was ON. I checked my entire fuel system and had flow everywhere. Pulled the float bowls...nothing there either. Fired it back up and started playing with the mags. With the left switch off, it started missing badly and sounding weird and at idle would almost quit. With just the other one on it would run right up to static rpm and on both it was missing just slightly. I pulled the plugs and they looked okay but I changed them anyways and then started chasing wires. What I found was one of the bullet connectors running from the engine harness to the coil was almost pulled completely apart and was just barely hanging on. Those connectors have a seam in them. I spread the connector out a little bit and plugged it back in. Another test run and it ran great while doing all combinations of mag checks. I tidied up my harness and went and flew it in the pattern and it ran awesome...better than it has in a while. It was idling smoother than it has been lately too. I'm stumped at why it wasn't running fine off the other mag. Maybe I had a bad plug as they were due for a change. After a VERY thorough test flight around and around the pattern and inflight mag checks with no issues I decided to go ahead and head for the Fly-In I was originally flying to. This route is all farm land with lots and lots of airports along the way. She didn't miss a beat in 2.1 hrs so I'm pretty confident that connection was the issue.

 

Before you fly again please check all your CDI connections! The last takeoff I made before this one was on a one way strip over the trees. The outcome would have been totally different. Also the last time I flew I noticed my Tiny Tach was fluctuating up and down and giving erroneous RPM's for a while and then it would smooth back out. That one it runs off was the coil that lost connection. She was telling me something wasn't right.

 

The Fly-in was great...all taildraggers... 1600ft grass strip. Cubs, Champs, T-carts, Pacers, Interstate cadet, 140's, right up my alley.

 

Check out the Red wire...this was the culprit

 

 

 

Amazing Tri Tip lunch

 

 

Stanislaus Co Sheriff and the Fresno PD both showed up. Guess the owners knew some of the pilots. They were on a "training" mission.

 

 

 

 

Couple of legend cubs showed up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1avidflyer 1983]

Glad it all ended well for you Joey. Obviously you did everything right when push came to shove. I've had a few engine outs, and figure if you can walk away without bleeding you did good. If the plane still flys without needing to be rebuilt, then it was great! Had a couple of each kind and don't want anymore..... Jim Chuk

[thebriman 69]

Thanks for sharing Joey!  Who knows, maybe you just saved a life.  

[jjbaker 73]

Great writeup and nice pictures of the flyin.

[RDavidson 183]

Great save and find! Glad you weren't stuck out in the mountains some where!

Stay safe,

Ron

[dynomike 91]

good job man ,glad it turned out well .

[akflyer 1427]

Glad this one turned out good. 

 

I encourage everyone to find a big safe area and do some dead stick practice.  For and airplane that flys so good and is so much fun to fly I think you will be shocked at the glide ratio.  Please don't make the mistake of trying to stretch that glide out just a hair more and pull the nose up as that will just net you a much greater sink rate and not give you enough energy to flare.  For those of us running clutches, we really don't glide for $hit!  Go to altitude and play with speeds, sink rates and use a GPS to determine distance traveled over the ground to figure out YOUR best glide speed.  When I had my engine out on the Avid I would have never made the runway if it wasn't for a 20kt tailwind (ok, I still didn't make the runway but I made the airport and landed on the grass) and I thought I had plenty of altitude from where I was to get the to the airport. 

 

Joey, do you have the lead from the tiny tach just wrapped around one set of plug wires?  If so, how do you do a mag test

 

[saskavid 47]

I've always been leery of that wire connection. rotax manual says to shrink tube the connection. Easier said than done in some installations. Mine are tied together with a careful application of electrical tape.

[TJay 1041]

now that you say that. I only have my tiny tack wire wrapped around 1 plug wire and when I do a mag check it all works good, dont know how but it does.

[akflyer 1427]

If it is only wrapped around one mag wire it should drop to 0 when you kill that mag.  I have mine wrapped around both both plug wires on one cylinder so I can see the very small (maybe 15-20 RPM) drop between the two.

 

[akflyer 1427]

I've always been leery of that wire connection. rotax manual says to shrink tube the connection. Easier said than done in some installations. Mine are tied together with a careful application of electrical tape.

 

I have mine tied together with rib lace cord.  I use that for most electrical ties because unless you take the time to carefully trim the ends of cut off tie wraps, they turn into little ginsu knives that will cut the crap out of you when you slide your hand across them

 

[C5Engineer 1170]

Funny you mention that!

[EDMO 1078]

The cheapest education is what you learn from listening to others: Show and Tell, just like Kindergarten!

Good posts, Joey and Leni.

EdMO

[akflyer 1427]

Joey you got off easy with one bandaide   When I first redid the panel in mine I used plastic tie wraps.. about half way through the job my hands and arms looked like I went a few rounds with a tiger on cat nip... thats when my IA laughed at me and told me to use rib lace cord.  It takes a few more seconds to tie it, but it will never cut you! 

 

[Dusty 126]

I lost one mag in flight a while back(bad stator on the mag without the tach)I didn't realise until landed and did a drop test before shutdown.If I had known I wouldn't have landed.

I now run two tachs which should hopefully alert me to any in flight mag issues

Cheap insurance?

[TJay 1041]

Mine is wrapped around 1 wire on my 503 and the tiny tach works on right and left mag with very little rpm drop but it does read it out for both. interesting huh.

[1avidflyer 1983]

If the wires are close enough together where you wrapped the tiny tack wire around the one wire, it's probably picking up the pulse from the other wire. Remember the Rotax fires at top and bottom of each stroke, so when one fires at TDC the other fires at BDC (or there abouts when you figure in the ignition advance before TDC) Jim Chuk