scandtours
scandtours
Once upon a time…..
No, this is a real story which happened to me in Sweden for many years ago.
A friend of mine asked me to test fly his new build gyro, powered b a Limbach motor. The pilot got training on my Parsons tandem and a restricted permit to fly was issued by the Swedish LFV (FAA.) This permission allows the pilot to make test flight only.
I sat in the gyro and the fist thing I did (I always do this when I fly somebody else gyro) is some mental practicing reaching the killing switch in case of an emergency.
The gyro behaved normally on the ground and no adjustments needed. Stick very smooth and engine like a Swiss watch.
After some short crow hops, I decided to fly the circle since everything seemed very OK. I took off and at 30 ft high I heart a “P A N K” something like an explosion. The stick left from my hand due to the strong stick vibrations and fraction of a second later a second P A N K, even more loudly, was heart. What I succeeded to do was to kill the engine as the whole gyro was shaking like hell. The vibrations were so strong that I don’t even remember if I had landed the gyro or if it landed by itself.
What happened??
Both of one ¼ left carburetor studs failed, carb flew into the blades and landed into the prop.
One of the blades was seriously damaged and one blade of the two wooden blade prop was missing from the root/hub.
No need to describe what kind of vibrations encounted.
Bensen made an important modification on all original ¼ McCulloch carb studs with 3/8.
Here I can say, One who learns 100 times is not like the one who learns 101 times. In aviation this is very true.
No, this is a real story which happened to me in Sweden for many years ago.
A friend of mine asked me to test fly his new build gyro, powered b a Limbach motor. The pilot got training on my Parsons tandem and a restricted permit to fly was issued by the Swedish LFV (FAA.) This permission allows the pilot to make test flight only.
I sat in the gyro and the fist thing I did (I always do this when I fly somebody else gyro) is some mental practicing reaching the killing switch in case of an emergency.
The gyro behaved normally on the ground and no adjustments needed. Stick very smooth and engine like a Swiss watch.
After some short crow hops, I decided to fly the circle since everything seemed very OK. I took off and at 30 ft high I heart a “P A N K” something like an explosion. The stick left from my hand due to the strong stick vibrations and fraction of a second later a second P A N K, even more loudly, was heart. What I succeeded to do was to kill the engine as the whole gyro was shaking like hell. The vibrations were so strong that I don’t even remember if I had landed the gyro or if it landed by itself.
What happened??
Both of one ¼ left carburetor studs failed, carb flew into the blades and landed into the prop.
One of the blades was seriously damaged and one blade of the two wooden blade prop was missing from the root/hub.
No need to describe what kind of vibrations encounted.
Bensen made an important modification on all original ¼ McCulloch carb studs with 3/8.
Here I can say, One who learns 100 times is not like the one who learns 101 times. In aviation this is very true.
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