Murietta, CAL
Sometime before 1980 my crew & I found a mesa about 10 miles north of our home airport, Fallbrook Community Airpark. This mesa was flat and completely uninhabited. We drove out there with a scope and minibike complete with odometer. We laid out an (estimated) 3 mile oval and marked it with white painted native stone piles and 10' long 2" white PVC pipe. A couple years later the PVC was becoming difficult to see, as were some of the rock piles. I sent a crew member out there on his motorcyle to survey the course and fix the pylons which were hard to find. It was my intent to fly out while he was there to assist if possible.
My preflight was brief but complete. I had a fuel sight gage and it read 1/2 or more so off I went. Upon reaching the course I found my crewman having difficulty finding one or more of the 'piles' (pylons) but we did not have communication. It appeared that I could not help him so I elected to fly the course a couple laps for fun. On the second lap the engine quit cold. My immediate reaction was to initiate a climb while checking the oil pressure, fuel pressure and fuel quantity. I turned on the electric boost pump to no avail and then moved both the mixture and throttle, again with no good response. By then the airspeed was decaying to below 100 MPH so I tightened up the belt and harness while capping the (minimal) climb and turning toward the most reachable and probably most acceptable emergency landing area, in Murrietta. As any air racer will attest, and all at a race can easily see, when one goes from 200+ MPH and pulls up (as at the end of a race) one will gain considerable altitude. However, no one ever practices this after having lost all power output and I can tell you that when the engine quits the altitude gain is drastically lower. I barely cleared the edge of the mesa on which the course is located. I surveyed the reachable part of mother earth and selected a dirt road and headed toward an approach for it- no it would not do, due to the power lines, then selected another and- no it had a huge rut, immediately looked at a third and rejected it. This left an open unlevel field of grass almost straight ahead into the wind. Today, I find myself quoting many of my flight instructors (my father) wisdoms and at that point in time back in May 1982 one of his bits of information came to me and I am convinced that this saved my life. At about 50' above the rolling ground I recognized a panic deep inside- I did not want to be here- this was going to be very bad- but then I recalled some words of his- "Most people who have an accident in a little airplane do not need to get hurt. If you just keep on flying the airplane as if all was normal you probably will survive". Mind you, this recollection came in a heartbeat and did not in any way lessen the panic I felt, but it did force or allow me to follow its good council.
The airplane stalled at 6" above the tops of the 3" grass. The right gear dug in and from there on I was along for the ride. Afterward I was able to determine what had happened from the marks in the grass and the damage to the airplane. From inside the airplane all I could tell was that it was green outside then blue outside and I could not tell how many cylces of this color change had occurred. After the right main dug in the airplane began a cartwheel (maneuver?). The right main dug in, the nose hit, the left wing tip hit, the tail hit & finally the right wing tip hit followed by the nose coming to rest in the grass with the mains in contact also. I turned everything off and climbed out. Almost immediately someone drove up. He took me to the closest house where I called home lest Mrs. or mom hear of it without the complete information. When we got back to the airplane I was informed that the FAA was on the way but would be some time due to the distance from Riverside to Murrietta. I asked two people to smell my breath and I walked into old town Murrietta and had two beers. The investigation was brief. There was no property damage other than my own. All the documents were in order. I explained my dilemma to the FAA at having read the fuel gage prior to takeoff yet I had obviously suffered fuel exhaustion. They had much compassion for the damage to the "pretty little airplane" and must have decided to let me off easy. I assume this was termed an incident. While at the incident site that day I had stuck a stick in the fuel tank to find zero fuel. A local newspaper cameraman caught me and that is what they ran the following week on their front page. A friend later told me how to characterize this incident. He said I should say that there was foreign matter in the fuel system. Right? The fuel system is supposed to have fuel in it and nothing else, so air is foreign matter. Right?
Multiple spar splices, reskinning over 1/2 the wings, new I struts, raising the wing to conform with the new rules, new cowling, gear, fairings etc etc etc and 5+ years later we showed up at Reno 1987. And we waxed 'em good!
USE YOUR BROWSER BACK BUTTON