I had never been an eyewitness to an airplane crash in my life until this past summer. I saw two in one hour.
Both were experimental homebuilt aircraft. One had a Suburu engine. The other a Honda. One was an Europa. The other a 2 place Gyrocopter. It was a nightmare to see the first one, let alone the second one. The crowd was horrified; then, unbelievably, horrified again. Sirens, ambulances, fire trucks, police, the whole 9 yards. First, the Suburu powered Europa with it's 3 blade carbon fiber prop wasn't enough to get the Europa with two aboard out of the narrow grass strip. I saw him line up at the end of the runway and start his take off roll. When he got 3/4ths down the strip and had not rotated, I wondered if he had time to abort and not run through the fence. He never aborted but lifted off, flew weakly in ground effect, never established a climb, headed straight toward the power lines, pulled up and barely over the power lines, stalled, crashed. Too heavy, too short, underpowered. Suburu, which was supposed to have enough power, did have enough for one, not two, aboard. Two hurt REAL bad after hitting road and trees. One hour later, dejavous' all over again. Auto engine powered gyrocopter didn't have enough power to get them out. After using up the entire length of the runway and not aborting early enough, they went down at the end of the strip trying to needle between trees and the fence and rolled it up into a little ball. Biggest piece was the canopy. Minor injuries miraculously. This was at a well established private grass strip with thousands of ultralight, light, experimental, and certian certified aircraft operations from it and it was a fly-in. My observation is that experimental auto engines often don't have the power that the larger displacement air cooled certified small aircraft engines have. Others may feel different but if I am going to bet my life on an engine to lift me in my Ercoupe, it will be the engine that came in it. Skipper Barfield ___________________________________________________________________ Get the Internet just the way you want it. Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month! Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.
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