Mike, Do you have any details about those RV cockpit fires?
Thousands of Cessna's and other GA airplanes  have fuel selector valves
in the cockpit with rarely a cockpit fire caused by the fuel system. I
read the

snipped

Paul Lamar

Paul,

  I didnt mean to imply that those incidents I mentioned were simply
inflight cockpit/fuel fires. In fact both incidents were engine failures

in

flight which resulted in fire in the cockpit before the pilot could get

the

airplane on the ground.

Charlie Kuss wrote:

Paul,
 One of the accidents mentioned above was Von Alexander's RV-8. I know a bit
more than most, about his ship. Von & I both ask(ed) a lot of questions from
another knowledgeable RV builder, Jon Ross. It seems that Von routed an oil
line 1/4" from his heat muff. This heat muff concentrically surrounds one of
the exhaust pipes. He ASSumed that the fire sleeve would protect the hose.
Jon tried to make him understand (without success) that placing oil and fuel
hoses (firesleeved or not) near hot metal is a VERY bad thing.

 Von's rationale was that the heat muff would act as a heat insulator,
(compared to air) rather than a heat conductor. Jon stessed that adding the
heat muff near the oil hose would draw more heat TO the area of the hose.
Von did not understand this concept. Jon suspects that this hose burned
through, causing the loss of oil pressure and resultant engine mechanical
failure and fire.

Charlie Kuss
RV-8 wings
Boca Raton, Fl.

Thanks Charlie for that info. We all need to be very very careful
because the exhaust pipes on the rotary are extremely hot indeed.
Also radiation is very  important. Just because the exhaust is not in
contact with an object means little. If a part can "see" a hot pipe 
it will absorb  a lot of that heat.

Paul Lamar
 
The Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter.              Powered by Linux.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org