SonexBuilders.net

Hi all,
Caught this on http://www.kathrynsreport.com during morning coffee.
landed on road no damage no injuries. good to hear. engine issues?
Peyton Co. incident happend on thur sept 17, 2020.
registered to gerald carter. was this carl benda’s earlier?
sonex aircraft data base lists aerovee turbo.


WaiexN143NM
Michael

Yes Michael that was Carl’s. 2 local guys bought and I have no other info about that .


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Direct link

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/09/s ... urred.html

Yes, it was my turbo. One of the new owners "hired" a CFI with no experience in a Sonex or with the turbo to go out (seven miles from the airport for their first flight) and do some training with him. They ran it to rich and fouled out the plugs. They safely landed on a road and had to pull the seat cushion out of the rears. The other owner replaced the plugs and had to go over the turbo and mixture again. Hopefully they learned a valuable lesson about mixture and power settings, anyone that is running an aerovee turbo knows any throttle adjustment is a mixture adjustment.

intoaircooled wrote: Hopefully they learned a valuable lesson about mixture and power settings, anyone that is running an aerovee turbo knows any throttle adjustment is a mixture adjustment.

Out of curiousity, was it running an aeroinjector and if so, which needle?

Thanks,

yes, it's running an aero injector not sure which needle. It (engine) lets you know when it's not happy and when it's in the sweet spot. I don't know why they let it run rich and didn't listen to the airplane. I flew it for at least 45 minutes on a test flight a few days before and it was not and engine issue as it was a short between the headsets.

I will say the aerovee turbo is a sweet running engine, but just like a sweet woman if you don't pay attention to her she will definitely let you know when your screwing it up.

Well then. This is not how I wanted to introduce myself, but I guess it will be memorable.

I am Dana, Owner #2 of Carl's Turbo Sonex. Now with brand new spark plugs, along with some seat modifications to fit me. I am 6'5" and about 260lbs.
The plane received a condition inspection and was flown roughly a week before this and there were no problems.

After the CFI flight the plugs were not in good shape.




These were replaced and everything now is back to running great. The lack of available transition training makes a situation like this difficult.
But, with some patience and luck we will make it through without any more incidents.

After looking at Sonex for so long it's great to finally be a part of what seems to be a great community. One member gave us the front half of his plane to use during our seat modifications.
I am looking forward to flying 25198 for a very long time.

Out of curiousity, was it running an aeroinjector and if so, which needle?

Ryan, it currently has a 2.5 needle in it.

intoaircooled wrote: I don't know why they let it run rich and didn't listen to the airplane.

It is quite eye-opening to realize how many pilots, many with a great deal of experience, have no ability to "listen to" or "feel" what the airplane is telling them. I've flown with many pilots who will blissfully fly along when it's fairly obvious that the airplane isn't happy. I feel this is for the most part a training issue. Their instructors early in their training career didn't have this ability either, so never passed it along. Sad, that. It's an ability that can be learned, but the pilot must first be made aware that the skill is useful and learnable.