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1. 06:04 PM - A bit of excitement (Larry Cottrell)
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| Subject: | A bit of excitement |
A neighbor was missing 6 horses and asked me to check the desert
surrounding his ranch to see if I could find them. I had intended to go
flying today anyway as I wanted to check some areas for nesting Falcons. My
other hobby is falconry, and I want to get a new hawk this spring for
hunting.
No biggie, I can do both. I did find his horses and then proceeded to look
for the Falcons. I landed on a Playa lake bed and proceeded to walk to the
cliff that I wanted to check. When I returned, I turned on the Master
switch, and no fuel pump clicking that I am used to. After checking and not
being able to find what was wrong, I decided to start the engine and see if
it would run. Keep in mind that I run my fuel line out of the tanks to a
selector switch on the side of the pilot compartment. Then through a
gascolator, up to a facett fuel pump then on the the pulse pump and to the
carbs. about 4 feet lift.
It started right up and seemed to have enough power to fly, so I decided
to take off, circle the lake bed in case the engine quit. I got it off the
ground and began circling, it seemed to be doing alright, but I knew that I
wasn't going to be able to get all the fuel that I needed to fly the way
that I normally do. I was about 5 miles off the main hwy, but there was a
field tht had been cleared of Sage that cut off some of the distance. There
was no way that I could get a trailer in there to get the plane out,
without the possibility of getting in trouble with the BLM, as the area was
listed as a Study area, and they do not want you to be making tracks in
there at all. About the time that I decided that it wasn't going to quit
the EIS warning light came on. I have the EGT's set for 1330 degrees, as
the engine leans out to stop somewhere below 1500. The EGT's were showing
1420 and going up. I quickly throttled back and at 5000 RPM's it began to
sink down to 1410. I circled a nother time and it stayed at that temp and I
was still flying, so I decided to head to the Hwy, thinking that if worse
came to worse I could make an emergency landing there and hope that no one
ran me over afterward.
Now I am much too impatient to fly at that low a speed, and I wasn't sure
that I could maintain altitude at the level, but it did, even though I felt
that I was slowly sinking into the ground. I nursed it home, flying over
the road and back to my strip with no problem, but I was pretty wet under
the arms, and dry in the mouth when I did land.
The moral of this story is - Don't rule these pulse pumps out. They work
better than you think.
Here is a video of the event.
https://vimeo.com/163326173 password- owyheeflyer
Larry
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