REFLECTOR:Confession Week!!!

[Ronnie Brown]

Here's another prop story, but not on a Velocity.

While I was working on my Velocity at the airpark, I heard a plane taxiing
out.  It was a pretty RV-6A.

Since I was several hundred feet away, I couldn't quite make out what seemed
to be out in front of the nose gear as it went down to the other end of the
runway.

Then as it turned around and started its take off, I could see it was the
TOW BAR!!!  As the RV rotated the tow bar dropped down and I thought, well
at least it may fall off.  But when the tow bar drooped down about 30-45
degrees, it bounced up and into the performance prop.  The prop turned into
a shower of toothpicks (looked like steam or water), the engine oversped,
but the pilot alertly pulled the power, and made a quick landing on what was
left of the 3000' runway.  I jumped in my truck and drove to his end of the
runway.  He had no idea what had happened, just that his prop was about two
foot shorter than it used to be.  I explained to him that his tow bar was
the culprit.  We found the steel tow bar halfway down the runway, severely
bent and mangled from the encounter with the prop,

What was amazing was that he taxied through about 400-500 feet of grass and
halfway down the runway without the tow bar causing any steering problems.

He has that on his pretaxi check list now!!!


----- Original Message -----
From: <Tstockmn@aol.com>
To: <reflector@tvbf.org>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 10:24 PM
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR:Confession Week!!!


| In addition to the usual takeoffs with the speed brake down (I told the
passenger it was a defense against bird strikes) or the accidental bumping
of a mag switch, I did something more expensive early on.   I was not too
pleased with the static RPM at run up, so was trouble shooting if it was the
engine, performance prop or both.   I had just finished retiming the engine,
so decided to do a static run up in front of the hangar.  I picked up all
the tools, etc and cleared the area.   I started the engine and then slowly
pushed the throttle forward.   At about 2200 RPM, there was loud !WUMP-WUMP!
and the plane shook.   I immediatly pulled the mixture, throttle and killed
the mags. I was rewarded with a shower of thousands of pieces of rug yarn.
I had forgotten to pick up a rug in front of the plane and it was sucked
into the prop.  One prop blade went through the roof, another shot down the
taxiway and the third was never found.   All that was left was the hub.    I
now hav!
|  e a $2000 "sculpture" on my fireplace mantle to remind me of the event.
Unfortunately, it made a rather loud noise which attracted everyone at the
airport.   I also won the award at our annual airport banquet for the
dumbest stunt of the year.
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