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Nasty ole no good inflight ajustable pitch

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Posted

Soooo yesterday we take a flight of 2 to our favorite duck hunting grounds.. the initial take off and subsequent landings went as planned. The third round, we found a bunch of ducks holed up on a little slew but the only way to get to them was to land in the saltwater, taxi to shore and put a sneak on the little bastages. Landing went as planned.. the sneak was working as planned till we got off track a little bit and missed the main group of Greenheads by about 60 yards when we popped up over the river bank.. they just laughed at us, showed us their tail feathers and hauled ass out there.. We figure OK enough is enough, time to head home as it was getting late. I let my un named buddy (read my other stories and you can figure out who he is) take off first. I had looked the situation over real well, and we had about 1' chop on the water, but the tide had gone out and we had miles of smooth mud flats to use. I told him to stay on the mud and all would be good.... Here is where things start heading south. He firewalls it and I can hear that engine just wrapping up, but the prop is not making alot of noise.. We are on a super slick surface, and he is not gaining speed very quick. To my horror, he starts trying to horse the poor little kitfox in the air WAY too slow.. he gets it to jump in the air, the right wing drops and hits the mud, pulling him in a right hand turn.. Most would have gotten off the power, let it settle and check their shorts.. but no my good buddy.. he keeps that bitch firewalled, rides it out into the ocean and keeps trying to push this takeoff run. I am now SCREAMING into the radio telling him to get outa the rough stuff, get back to shore so we can figure out what is wrong.. but he has decided that he did not need to turn his radio on.

I jump out of my plane and start waving my hands like a retard at chucky cheese.. I take my coat off and am waving that around trying to get Mr. tunnel visions attention. I had to stand there and watch him make 6 take off attempts all with the same result.. but now he is in the ocean swells, and just getting the ever loving shit beat outa himself about 1/2 mile off shore.. I knew for certain that on 3 occasions he would be swimming, but those damn full lotus floats took the abuse and kept him afloat. I finally took off in mine and did a strafing run, landed infront of him and waved him to shore. We get in to shore and notice that 2 of the 4 cross brace wires are snapped and the plane is now flopping on the rigging, and the right wing tip is split open and the top cap strip is ripped off... GREAT. We pull it up on shore as best we could, tied her down to some logs, and are formulating a plan to go get it today... This should be fun. 12 degrees outside and I am on floats... hope I don't ice up and plant mine in the trees :lol:

What went wrong.... By some F'd up way of thinking, the said individual thought that by going max RPM and beyond he would get off the ground quicker... The bad part about that is, when you take out enough pitch to over rev the engine, you dont have enough pitch to fly. What went really wrong, was pushing it 5 additional times to try and get it into the air.... I do believe that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same exact test or action and expect a different outcome.

Guys, if you have in-flight adjustable, DONT go over red line thinking that you are making more thrust.. it does not work.. set the prop to turn 63-65 on take off and bump in more pitch as the speed increases to keep that bugger around 6500 MAX for climbout. Watch the EGT's as they will tell you if you dont have enough load on the engine!

Today will tell the tale if we can get it back in one piece.

:beerchug:

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Posted

For all thoes who are thinking, " I know who that was" It wasn't ME.....

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Posted

For all thoes who are thinking, " I know who that was" It wasn't ME.....

Nope not this guy... Bob has a bad ass fixed pitch Brolga on his KF I!

:beerchug:

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