REFLECTOR: Precautionary landing near St. Louis

Tue Nov 18 01:21:55 CST 2008

I have a story to tell the group about an incident that happened about 
two weeks ago as I was flying home to central Illinois from Dallas, TX.  
The reason I am relating it is so that someone else who may have a 
similar setup may be able to avoid having the same problem that I did.

I was flying my Velocity STD-FG in a northeasterly direction through the 
Saint Louis Class B airspace at about 5500 ft. and about 12 miles NNW of 
Lambert Field. The weather was perfect: wind out of the southeast at 
less than 10 mph, no ceiling, 10+ miles visibility at about 11 AM.  Very 
suddenly, the tone of the engine changed to a much harsher, louder 
sound.  I immediately checked the engine instruments and everything 
still looked fairly normal.  Next, I looked at my GPS and saw that I was 
about 6-7 miles from KSET, a rural airport in St. Charles County.  I 
didn't know exactly what was wrong, just a very different sound.  Was it 
an exhaust leak, had one cylinder quit firing, etc.?  I moved the 
mixture to full rich and pulled the power back some.  The noise subsided 
a little but still didn't sound quite right.  I applied power again and 
that raspy sound was back again.  I thought to myself, "Well, I'm close 
enough to make it to KSET without any power so there's no need to push 
the engine any harder than I have to."  So, I pulled the power back to 
almost idle and let ATC know that I was having an engine problem and I 
was going to have to make a precautionary landing at KSET.  A controller 
was immediately assigned to talk with me and me only.  Even though there 
was other traffic on the radio, he did not ask me to change frequencies 
but just started giving me vectors for the airport.  He gave me runway 
information and the current weather at KSET.  Based upon that 
information, I told him that I wanted to land on runway 18 which was 
3800 feet long.  By this time the airplane had slowed from about 180 mph 
down to about 120 mph and the controller told me that I should see the 
field at about my two o'clock position or so.  All I could see was 
farmland but I stayed in a slight bank turning as he instructed me.  
When I finally saw the field I was about 2 miles away and probably about 
3000 feet MSL.  Field elevation was 437 feet.  I had to lose a bunch of 
altitude.  I pulled the throttle all the way back to idle and pushed the 
prop control full forward and kicked in both rudders to create some 
drag.  I probably should have engaged the speed brake but I wasn't so 
sure I wanted that much drag nor did I really want to take my hands away 
from the controls to flip the speed brake switch.  The rudders were both 
almost fully engaged and I was loosing altitude a little faster.  At 
about a mile out I was lined up for runway 18 but still pretty high 
(maybe 1800 feet MSL).  I thought maybe I should do a 360 just to lose 
some altitude but I also thought I'd better check to see if the engine 
would respond just in case I needed a little power.  I nudged the 
throttle forward and the engine started coughing and sputtering.  That 
wasn't going to work.  So I bagged the 360 turn idea and just decided to 
make a gentle 'S' turn.  As I came over the numbers I was still pretty 
high...maybe 200-300 feet above the ground.  I could see the other end 
of the runway in the distance.  Was I going to overshoot?  I made sure 
that the throttle was all the way back and the prop was all the way in.  
I pulled hard back on the stick to get a somewhat nose high attitude and 
by the time I was about halfway down the runway I was pretty sure I was 
going to make it.  I forced it down at maybe 5/8 of the way down the 
runway and was able to stop before the end.  Using the momentum from 
landing I turned off on a taxiway and made it a little way back toward 
the terminal building.  Again I tried to apply power by inching the 
throttle forward.  The engine coughed and sputtered and then finally 
died.  The airport manager came out and towed me in.  The controller 
from St. Louis TRACON had called him on the phone and alerted him of my 
landing.  By the way, I had lost contact with ATC because of my low 
altitude at about a mile or so from the field.  The controller wanted to 
know if I'd made it in ok.

Well, I was relieved that I had made it in with no damage to myself or 
the airplane.  But now I had to find out what the problem was.  I 
inspected the exterior of the plane and quickly found a clue.  The 
pilot-side exhaust pipe was not sticking through the lower cowling as it 
usually had.  Not good.  Was it merely an exhaust pipe break?  If so, 
why had the engine run so rough and eventually quit?  I peeked inside 
the cowl with a flashlight and saw my exhaust pipe hanging there by the 
safety wire.  Good thing it didn't just fall out and go through the prop.

I removed the lower cowling and found that there was no other apparent 
damage to the engine.  I just had a broken exhaust pipe.  Apparently the 
engine started running rough because my air intake sucks air from inside 
the cowling and the engine just started sucking in its own exhaust!  I 
suppose as the airplane slowed down there was that much less fresh air 
getting in to clear out all of that exhaust gas.

Well, I called the factory just in case the exhaust pipe was 
unrepairable on hopes that they would have a spare in stock.  Would you 
believe it, I ran into the same problem again.  I was told that since I 
was not the original builder/owner and since I had not paid the $400 
transfer fee or whatever they call it, that I was not eligible to even 
buy parts from them!  I reminded the gentleman that Scott Baker had 
informed me that I could buy parts but that I just couldn't receive 
support.  He said that he would check into that but that the pipes 
weren't in stock anyway so it didn't really matter right now.

So, I removed the pipe and took it down to the local welding shop where 
they repaired it for 50 bucks.  I put the pipe back on, started up the 
plane and flew it back home without a problem.  The moral of this story 
is that if your induction system is sucking air from inside the cowling 
you'd better check to make sure that it can get fresh air in the event 
of an exhaust leak.  I was just so thankful that this had not happened 
about an hour or so earlier while I was flying over the Ozark 
mountains.  Of course if I had lost the exhaust pipe over the mountains 
I probably wouldn't have been in such a hurry to pull the throttle back 
and maybe, just maybe, there might have been enough fresh air coming in 
at 180 mph that the engine would have continued to run ok.

-- 
Dave Philipsen
Velocity STD-FG
N83DP