Article: 1476 of rec.aviation.homebuilt Path: newshost.ncd.com!ncd.com!olivea!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!nntp-server.caltech.edu!apache!czim From: czim@apache.caltech.edu (Chris Ziomkowski) Newsgroups: rec.aviation.homebuilt Subject: Wrecked my new Glasair I Date: 20 Sep 1993 21:33:26 GMT Organization: caltech Lines: 96 Sender: czim@apache (Chris Ziomkowski) Distribution: world Message-ID: <27l7j6INNa6m@gap.caltech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: apache.scp.caltech.edu I'd like to start off by thanking everyone who responded to my earlier post about buying the Glasair. I purchased it a few days ago for $35,000, after the editor of Kit Plane (after a tip from Stodard Hamilton) offered me $15,000 for the IO-360 and prop. I decided that I could easily part out the instrument panel for the remaining $20K, and throw away the hull. (Looking through TAP, I valued the panel new at $65K.) So I did exactly what I didn't want to do, and bought the plane without being able to fly it. The estate refused to let the plane be flown before purchase. My partner and I insured the hull for $50K through Avemco, which required 2 hours of Make and Model time. We called Washington and got the names of some Glasair owners in Southern California and made arrangements with one to come check us out in our airplane. He arrived Sunday morning, and apparently there had been a misunderstanding. He thought we had a Glasair 3, and did not feel comfortable flying our Glasair I. So, he took my partner up and let him fly the Glasair 3, which we thought would probably count for a chaeckout for insurance reasons. Besides, we reasoned, what are the odds of having an accident before the requisite 2 hours in our plane? (Subtle foreshadowing.) My partner was going to go check out in the Glasair 3, and then come down and give me a checkout in our plane. Things went exactly as we planned. He flew the Glasair 3 and then went to fly our airplane. I climbed in the right seat beside him and we took off. The FT I with an IO-360 climbed beautifully, doing about 1500'/min at 125 Knots with 600 lbs of fuel and passengers. As we were climbing though, it looked like the builder had slaved the oil temperature to the altimiter, because it quickly climbed out of the green and into the red. (This problem did not show up on the ground. It had been run at 2800 rpm for 15 minutes with no effects.) At 4000' we lost the prop governor, which we theorize was due to the hot oil temperature. The whole time the cylinders were sitting barely above 300 -- almost cold. We throttled back and decided to return to the airport. We kept up good speed in an attempt to keep the oil temperature cool, an effort which was partially succesful. We were on final doing what our indicator said was 100 mph, although I have shot many approaches into San Jose at 120 Knots, (a runway very similar to El Monte in size) and I'm almost certain that were going at least that. We touched down moderatley hard and the plane bounced. My partner, (having only a small amount of training in the III earlier that morning, was not perfect with the controls, and over corrected.) We hit hard a second time, and this time the nose wheel came down on the runway before bouncing slightly. We hit a third time, this time much softer and coasted easily to a stop. We then called ground and taxied to the tie down area where we intended to have the plane checked out the following morning. I was happy to be back on the ground, as thoughts of trying to do a dead stick landing had been racing through my mind only minutes before. After we had parked and got out of the plane, we noticed that a funny thing had happened to our propellor. It had turned into a Q-tip. It appears that the nose gear, (which had not had the strengthening kit applied) had given about 6 inches during the landing. Since we only had about 3" of clearance to begin with, (that McCauley prop was never designed to go on a Glasair) the prop had struck and bent. We never even knew this had happened. We are now stuck with a whole bunch of questions, which I was hoping someone with experience might be able to help us out with. A) Did the checkout in the Glasair III that morning actually count as Make and Model time for insurance reasons. B) It actually turns out that with all the ground time we put in before we took off (doing things like taxi tests and avionics tests) that flight actually lasted 2.2 hours. Since the accident occurred at the end of the flight, would the requisite 2 hours have been met in any case. C) If we submit a claim for this accident, will Avemco cancel our policy? If this in fact turns out to be the case, it looks like we'll get stuck with the full amount, because we couldn't find anyone else who will give us hull coverage. D) What can we do about the oil temperature problem. We tried later, and this problem will not manifest itself on the ground. Our local mechanic could not find anything wrong with the setup (although he has no experience with Glasairs.) E) We knew when we bought the plane that a prop strike was only a matter of time, although we didn't realize it was going to be on the first flight. We had a weak nose gear and only 3" of prop clearance. What kind of a prop can we put on an IO-360 that will give us more clearance. Someone suggested that a 3 blade prop might have slightly smaller blades. Does anyone know if this is true? Does the strengthening kit for the nose gear give us any more ground clearance than the old gear? I knew before I went that going up in an unknown aircraft with basically no experience was a stupid thing to do, but I didn't think anything bad would come of it. I was thinking it might make a real good article for AOPA Pilot's "Never Again" column. Thanks for any comments or advice, Chris. -- ---------------------------------------------------__----------------------- Chris Ziomkowski / | Software Consultant | | _______ |___| |____/-| / | czim@scp.caltech.edu - ---- ---- ---- ---- - *|__| |____---- \_/ | | | \-| "Flying is more fun anyway" | | -------- \__| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------