REFLECTOR: N4PE flies but not so good at the end

[Terry Miles]

I know that feeling.  I know you will put it back together.
Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of Brian Michalk
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 8:48 PM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: REFLECTOR: N4PE flies but not so good at the end

Group,

Today was my first day to fly.  Unfortunately it resulted in an off airfield
landing.  It's been a long day, and I wanted to get this out there before
the FAA notice was posted.

I have several theories at this point as to what happened, and I'll go
through each one trying to identify the smoking gun.

First, the flight.  Approximately 12:30 pm with a 5 knot southern wind, I
prepared for takeoff.  Some people think I am a bit cautious, and maybe so
in many cases, but today was a good day to be cautious.  I had the local
fire department notified, and they were standing by.  Pretty nice folks, and
I think they liked having something interesting to do.
Dean Norris with a sharp eyed passenger took off in his Velocity to fly
chase.  I had maps made, and distributed to everyone with big letters to
help direct ground crews in a bad event.  Dean took off, and I waited for
him to get on downwind before starting my roll.  Previous to today, I had
been doing a bit of fast taxiing, and nothing abnormal ever showed up.  I
rotated several times during fast taxi tests at about 65mph.
Today, as I accelerated through 70, I remember thinking how odd it was that
I had not yet rotated, but this was the first time under power.
Rotation speed is lower without the power vector pushing the nose down.

I accelerated, and lifted off about 75kts.  The plan was to climb to
1000'AGL at 90kts.  I reached my 90kts very quickly, and kept pulling nose
up a little bit more.  Man, there was a lot of power.  The plane flew
straight.  No major stick forces that I can recall.  I reached about 900
feet, and the engine began losing power.  I immediately turned crosswind to
downwind.  I wish I could say I was maintaining optimal airspeed, but I
don't recall any airspeeds after that point, and looking back would have
been the absolute best thing to maintain.  I pulled out some throttle, and
regained some engine power, but not enough to arrest the descent.  I was
still on downwind, and picked out a field north of the field to put down in.
Then I changed my mind.  With the bit of power I had, I decided to turn
south into the find to reduce my ground speed.  I picked out a field, and
turned to it.  I ended up about 600 yards north from the end of the runway
facing south.

I will remember this day forever, and will play back the choices into
eternity.

The plane contacted ground, and came to a stop within 47 yards.  I stepped
it off.  The ground was quite soft.  The gear all had been sheared off.  The
right tip of the canard dug into the ground, and when it did, caused
compression crumpling on the right side of the fuselage.
 Next, the plane wanted to move left, and that's when the main gear really
dug in and sheared off, which was quite a jolt.

Nothing broken for me except my ego.  I literally have a minor scratch on my
left hand, that's all.  Amazing.  I'm not even sore ... yet.

Going back to the causes, I have a few theories that need to be researched.
As I taxied over to the fuel pumps, I saw the low fuel light was on.  After
taking on five gallons each side, I noticed the warning light had turned
off.  When the engine lost power after takeoff, the light was on.  However,
I'm not sure fuel starvation is the reason for the power failure.  There's
4.9 gallons in that sump.  That's a lot of time, and there is no way I could
have emptied it.  The other theory is that I was running too rich.  The
electronic injection system was tuned out to 2250 RPM's, because that's the
limit I could do in ground testing.  I then extrapolated out to 3000 RPM's
(red line at 2800), and then richened up the whole table to be on the safe
side.  One thing I wish I had done during high power testing was to see how
much more rich I could go before killing the engine.  I pulled the spark
plugs, and the plugs closest to the firewall were very sooty.  The other
four plugs looked very good.

After 12 years of building, it looks like I have a little bit more to go.
The belly of the plane looks good.  The compression buckling worries me as
to how I will fix that.  The wings are also showing compression buckling
just outboard of the spar attach bolts.