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I am passing on a post from the Luscombe forum on yahoo. This was posted by a fellow here in my area who bought a Luscombe this summer and not long after had an engine failure on takeoff. This is the same fellow, Jack Fleetwood, who attended our Taylorcraft Fly-in back in March. As you read his story, keep in mind that we all need to be careful out there when buying replacement parts or modification parts for critical systems. Thank God... Jack and his passenger are doing OK and were not seriously injured. This could have been much worse. Terry
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My Crash
Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:17 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Jack" jackfleetwood
So when one of us crashes, there will always be speculation. I'm as
guilty as the next guy. Sometimes we make mistakes and cause the
accident, that why they're called accidents. I know a lot of people
think I crashed because I was overloaded and density altitude was high.
I was just barely under gross and it was 86 degrees, elevation is 1027.
I will also admit I had flown the plane way over gross in similar
conditions and had no issues.
As any of you would though, I even questioned myself. What could I have
done differently? I was pretty shook up over this crash. Luckily my
good friend Howard and others believed in me and helped me keep my head
up during this trying time.
The NTSB and even the FAA originally thought it was carb ice.
As the investigation went on, the FAA seemed to be focusing on the fuel
selector valve. When I met with the FAA to get my records back, I asked
him why he was concerned about it. He pulled out a package from
Aircraft Spruce that the valve came it. I clearly said on it that it
was not approved for use by the FAA. I had wing tanks, so this was the
selector valve on the floor with a cable running to just under the
panel.
He had the parts pulled and it's been confirmed the valve wasn't open
enough to allow full fuel flow. I did my normal runup and don't know
why I had full power for that, but apparently I didn't have enough for
takeoff. With the cable, you don't have a solid feel for if the valve
is actually in the detent... you can sort of feel it, and I would gently
try to turn it right and left to make sure it was in position. If it
was frozen into a partial position though, it would give me the
impression that it was open fully.
The FAA investigator says he want to go after the mechanic who installed
the valve, but most likely he will not. They don't have the staffing
and they've had a couple of fatalities in our area, so he'll most likely
never hear from them.
I'm sharing this in hopes that it helps someone. This is pretty much
what I know, but if anyone has questions I'll try to answer them.
I've shard the photos before, but here they are again for those who
didn't see them. We're clearly lucky to have walked away.
Photos Here
Jack
***************************
My Crash
Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:17 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Jack" jackfleetwood
So when one of us crashes, there will always be speculation. I'm as
guilty as the next guy. Sometimes we make mistakes and cause the
accident, that why they're called accidents. I know a lot of people
think I crashed because I was overloaded and density altitude was high.
I was just barely under gross and it was 86 degrees, elevation is 1027.
I will also admit I had flown the plane way over gross in similar
conditions and had no issues.
As any of you would though, I even questioned myself. What could I have
done differently? I was pretty shook up over this crash. Luckily my
good friend Howard and others believed in me and helped me keep my head
up during this trying time.
The NTSB and even the FAA originally thought it was carb ice.
As the investigation went on, the FAA seemed to be focusing on the fuel
selector valve. When I met with the FAA to get my records back, I asked
him why he was concerned about it. He pulled out a package from
Aircraft Spruce that the valve came it. I clearly said on it that it
was not approved for use by the FAA. I had wing tanks, so this was the
selector valve on the floor with a cable running to just under the
panel.
He had the parts pulled and it's been confirmed the valve wasn't open
enough to allow full fuel flow. I did my normal runup and don't know
why I had full power for that, but apparently I didn't have enough for
takeoff. With the cable, you don't have a solid feel for if the valve
is actually in the detent... you can sort of feel it, and I would gently
try to turn it right and left to make sure it was in position. If it
was frozen into a partial position though, it would give me the
impression that it was open fully.
The FAA investigator says he want to go after the mechanic who installed
the valve, but most likely he will not. They don't have the staffing
and they've had a couple of fatalities in our area, so he'll most likely
never hear from them.
I'm sharing this in hopes that it helps someone. This is pretty much
what I know, but if anyone has questions I'll try to answer them.
I've shard the photos before, but here they are again for those who
didn't see them. We're clearly lucky to have walked away.
Photos Here
Jack
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