Sorry I didn't make to Bill Eslick's for the Rotorfest, I missed by
about one hour. About 30 miles north of San Angelo TX the RPM suddenly
dropped and I could not restore it with any of my emergency procedures.
GPS told me nearest airport was Robert Lee about 15 miles away. I headed
there and landed without incident.

Turning the prop by hand shows almost zero compression in one rotor,
indicating bad/broken apex seals, quite similar to my engine-out
experience 2 1/2 years ago which caused a forced landing near the Grand
Canyon. This time the vibration was not quite as bad, and the RPM
dropped to around 4300 which was still not enough to maintain altitude.
I called my friend with a Glasair and he cam got me and took me home. I
will have to find some time to build another motor and drive 12 hours
back there and swap motors. Or I might drive there, remove the wings and
trailer it back, have not decided yet.
My good friend/mentor/flight instructor is trying to talk me into going
back to a Lycosaurus, and I have to think of some good reasons not to.
Until I get the motor back and torn apart, I wont know what caused the
failure, but I will post anything that I find.

Regards
Chuck Dunlap
RV-6 13B 535 hours

Glad everything worked out well Chuck.
I'm surprised you can't maintain altitude with 4300 RPM. Must be
differences in airframe and propeller pitch. I can maintain altitude at
70 to 80 knots with around 4000 RPM. At 3800 RPM I come down really
slow, like 100-200 fpm. I do that for fun when I'm out goofing off, kind
of like flying a glider. Those numbers were about the same when I had
the ducted fan.
I have not run an air filter in my 560 hours of flying, no problems. Any
FOD entering my ram air inlet under the right strake has to go through
the airflow sensor and then uphill about 1 foot to get into the engine
intake. It will be interesting to see what you find.

Perry


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