Guys,
It was finally a calm clear evening so I went for a ride before 3
or 4 more days of rain. The temp. was about 80 on the ground. I was going
around the pattern once before departing for a pleasure ride. I had all
my lights on and called my pattern legs. As I was on short finial the guy
that had been sitting, holding short called departure and entered the
runway. I hit the throttle and moved right and keyed the mike and just
said "OK, I guess I'll go around." he said something and stopped but I
couldn't understand him. By then I was back to 700 above and at the
departure end and I told him that I was clear and to go ahead. He
departed and I continued around for a decent landing. After that I flew
to home and buzzed the house and did a half hour flight around the area
and checked my indicated airspeed at 2800 and full throttle 79 deg. OAT.
I have the spinner back on and the speed is back up to 165 indicated but
the gps was showing a little more in every direction. I headed back and
did another landing. I still had time so I headed around the pattern one
more time. Everything was Zen and I pulled back for a flare and the prop
stopped with no warning of any kind. A quick look ahead told me I didn't
need the engine at that point so I just coasted to the exit. I couldn't
get it restarted. My guess is that the temps under the cowl combined with
it just idling for a couple minutes and the slow airspeed got the carb to
hot or vapor lock
Any way I ended up pushing the plane close to a half mile back to the
hanger. It really surprised me because all temps ( head, exhaust, oil )
were normal. When I got it back to the hanger I saw a puddle of oil on
the nose wheel fairing. This ticked me off too because I thought I had
all the oil problems behind me. So I took the cowl top off and there
wasn't a sign of oil leak any where, Soo I pulled the bottom half off and
found that there was a puddle of fuel in the bottom of the cowl and it
was just mixed with some oil film from the bottom of the cowl. I figure
that I may have flooded it trying to restart a hot engine. I ran the
battery down and will recharge it in the morning. I'll let you guys know
how it turns out.
It was 50 min. of fun up to then anyway.
Joe Horton, Coopersburg, Pa.
joe.kr2s.buil...@juno.com
