JuanRodriguez Elite Veteran Location: Rochester, New York
My Posts This: Topic Forum | Weekend.....Hi all,
After a soggy start to the weekend (Saturday a washout), I made it out to the RAM's "open house" funfly in Macedon. I had asked Ray Stacy to have Kyle fly the Q-50 and was prepared to capture the flight on video.
While in the hovering pad before the flight, I was in the process of checking the tracking after making some link changes to the head. The tracking was right on. I was also making some adjustments to the headspeed from 1750 to 1900. As I spooled up during the testing, I noticed a tremendous vibration !! I immediately shut things down to see what was going on. Well, one of tail rotor blade grips was lying on the ground next to the back of the machine !!
Upon inspection, it appears that there was no loctite on the screw that attaches the grip to the hub. The other blade grip was fine. You could "feel" it as I removed it and could see it on the bolt as well. I degreased both screws, replaced the link that had been damaged while flopping around and re-assembled the whole thing.
I have to say that I have never liked factory "pre-assembled" parts and will kick myself in the butt for not taking the time to make sure the parts were properly secured....THAT IS CLEARLY MY RESPONSIBILITY !!! I've been in this helicopter thing long enough to know better..... I consider myself "lucky" THIS TIME.....as the incident happened on the ground (no damage).
So now I'm ready to go.......or so I thought. Later in the day I got the opportunity to fire it up again with the thought of having Kyle fly the machine. Ray took it up first to see how the machine was like and a minute or two into the flight, it sounded like the OS50 was loosing power. Ray made a turn nose in to land so that we could richen the mix a bit and all of a sudden we both heard a "pop" and the engine died..... Ray did a very nice job with the auto but flying was done for the day...... The "pop" that we heard happened to be a friggin hole blown into the top of the piston !!!
I don't particularly believe in "fate" but I guess my "master plan" did not work out.... There will be a next time for sure.....with a Hyper as a replacement.....
Here is a pic of Kyle Stacy holding the machine. My buddy Rodney Neufer did the paint on the canopy... (I mentioned he would be doing a custom paint job on an earlier post...)
Hope you'all had a nice weekend....
Till the next time.
PS- Who the heck is the Murphy guy anyway ????
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