Day 1… LA or bust: Leaving Charleston
Well, I headed out to Rough River, KY for my airshow early this morning.
After washing the bird, I filed my IFR plan and took off, climbing to 4000 ft due to head winds. I had 40 kts on the nose.
After passing Columbia, had to climb to 8,000 ft with a 52 kt head wind to get across the Smokey Mountains. Yikes! I was cruising 180 kts plus yet my ground speed was about 126 kts. Wow, I had flown my plane I would have been going as fast as a car on the ground. It took about 3.5 hrs to get to RR which is close to 45 minutes longer than I had planned for.
After overflying the airport at 200 kts (just for fun), it was a smooth landing, parking the plane and chatting with people when I saw a Glass Air 3 take off. What a beautiful sounding engine. I assumed it must be a 6 cylinder Lycoming. The owner did a quick flyby when it happened. Weird popping sounds from the engine. He turned around on down wind, trying to make the airport, kept on going losing altitude and crashed. A huge fireball about .5 miles from the end of the runway. Crashed into a hotel. …more details…
You know, I was sort of numb to it. Watched the plane, saw it descend, knew it was going to crash, fireball.
Later that night, in bed thinking about it all I realized the reason it didnt have a visceral effect on my is that the fireball looked just like the fireballs you see at Oshkosh during the warbird re-enactment. Boom, fireball. Maybe too, I didnt know the guy, only saw the plane taxiing and was not emotionally connected.
He had built the plane and used a corvette engine it it (hence the smooth sound) and a funky redrive. Apparently the reduction drive decoupled the engine from the prop and he no thrust. I have never liked auto engines in plane and have NEVER seen a successful installation. Heavy, problem prone, troublesome. In almost all cases the builder eventually installs a Lycoming or Continental engine and begins to enjoy his plane. Why in the hell would you want to fly an experimental plane with a REALLY experimental engine? Isn’t one enough?
Off to dinner with friends and beer with my buddies. Life goes on.
