Ken Welter wrote:

                        Rino wanted to know more on the rotary engine
failures on my Coot. Two of them were thrust bearings in the engine due
to no thrust bearing on the input shaft of the Ross gearbox. One
failed in Portland and I landed in the Columbia river. The other I
just departed the Arlington air show and I landed in the Skagit river.
The last one I was at 6000 ft tops were 5000 and the ceiling 500 ft
and a pinion bearing went out and hamburgered the gearbox. Shavings
went into the engine and plugged the oil intake and seized the engine.

At this point the girl that was with me looked down at the clouds
and asked; is there any water down there? I said Columbia river under us.
Her next concern was (I guessed); I assume we are not going to make it to 
the San Juan Islands?  Are you going to get it fixed so we can go 
next weekend? 

At this point I lined
it up with the river, punched into the clouds and when I came out the
river was right where the GPS said it was.  Glad no one moved it. The
bottom line is; if you have a Ross gearbox, put a thrust bearing on the
input shaft and I suggest you put a sump on the return line from the
gearbox and put a chip sensor in it. This would have let me know
something was going wrong long before it happened.
Ken Welter

I had a girl friend like that once or twice :-)

Paul Lamar

The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter.              Powered by Linux.

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