Foxbat accident 14 Nov 2020

[turboplanner]

41 minutes ago, planedriver said:

I think SplitS is simply 

So much for this site as a valuable resource if this crap isn't moderated out.

[RFguy]

agreed  - IMO, threads should be "thinned' like plantation forests.

 

Edited November 17, 2020 by RFguy

[facthunter]

Monocultures are unnatural. and not good for the soil etc. . I  can understand some reaction on the subject in view of the past dealings with it. You have to be balanced in all this and stick to facts then we might get somewhere we are all comfortable with.. Nev

[planedriver]

1 hour ago, planedriver said:

I think SplitS is simply 

With all the posts knocking Jabiru's reliability in the past, I feel his comment was just a bit tongue in cheek, not to be taken seriously.

Lighten up and accept it for what it is.

Hopefully we can all learn something from this sad incident, and prevent similar situations arising.

[skippydiesel]

4 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Why would you say that?

 

The RAA Occurrance Review for the forst half of 2020 lists 25 accidents and 54 incidents - is it a trend in that volume?

 

 

Turbs - dont get sucked in

[RFguy]

Any online logging data to shed some light ?

I gather when the crew have recovered, there will be a story to tell.

 

I wonder about the data, as I have just built myself a "black box". (interested people start another thread PLEASE , and not post in this one) 

 

Not for my demise, but for my instructor to be able to see how I am flying ( (since can be imported to google earth and can be 'flown' offline, and control inputs can be recorded. )

 

Edited November 17, 2020 by RFguy

[Bruce Tuncks]

Why not increase the allowable height except for the approach path crossings? My explanation is that CASA actually wants us lot to have more accidents.

Imagine we went on strike and stopped having accidents. After a few years of this, I bet CASA's funding would be cut. And of course vice-versa... the more we crash, the more funding CASA gets.

 

[SplitS]

Off The top of my head

The last few serious incidents.

Heck field Rotax failed to make enough power on takeoff

South east of Melbourne (I think) Rotax powered coolant leak into cabin crashed into tree's

Orange Rotax powered (we don't know what caused this one so it may not be the engine)

and this Foxbat Rotax power engine failure.

So while I was   I was also half serious. There seems to be a string of Rotax failures.

 

[jackc]

35 minutes ago, SplitS said:

Off The top of my head

The last few serious incidents.

Heck field Rotax failed to make enough power on takeoff

South east of Melbourne (I think) Rotax powered coolant leak into cabin crashed into tree's

Orange Rotax powered (we don't know what caused this one so it may not be the engine)

and this Foxbat Rotax power engine failure.

So while I was   I was also half serious. There seems to be a string of Rotax failures.

 

Out of how many successful takeoffs?

[Methusala]

3 minutes ago, jackc said:

Out of how many successful takeoffs?

The point being made was, I think, how many crashes have there been in the same period of a/c powered by Jab engines? A fair comment because Jabiru has been highlighted by CASA .

[turboplanner]

42 minutes ago, jackc said:

Out of how many successful takeoffs?

As Methusla says, we were comparings known crashes/forced landings.

If it was airliners you might be talking per 100,000 Nm or million Nm, in Recreational aircraft if you base it on takeoffs, no one collects that data, if you base it on mission all aircraft do a lot of missions without an accident. If you just base it on forced landings or crashes arising out of engine failure, it's easier to visualise how close it might be coming to your turn.

 

RAA occurrence figures list these accident oe  incident causes in order:

1. Engine faiure or malfunction

2. Near Miss

3. Airspace infringement

4. Bird Strike

5. Loss of control

6. Landing gear issues

7. Hard Landing

 

SplitS:

RAA list 25 accidents for the first half of 2020

Your 4 is a big increase on the figures I pulled for Rotax several years ago, so maybe there is some sort of trend.

 

[FlyBoy1960]

48 minutes ago, Methusala said:

The point being made was, I think, how many crashes have there been in the same period of a/c powered by Jab engines? A fair comment because Jabiru has been highlighted by CASA .

 

Well, how many Jabiru's are being flown ATM ?    if there are 100 Rotax hours to only one Jabiru hour then of course the statistics are going to be weighted

[turboplanner]

1 minute ago, FlyBoy1960 said:

 

Well, how many Jabiru's are being flown ATM ?    if there are 100 Rotax hours to only one Jabiru hour then of course the statistics are going to be weighted

No one has made a numbers comparison, just that it's very unusual to see Rotaxes coming down other than in minute numbers.

[Jase T]

2 hours ago, SplitS said:

Off The top of my head

The last few serious incidents.

Heck field Rotax failed to make enough power on takeoff

South east of Melbourne (I think) Rotax powered coolant leak into cabin crashed into tree's

Orange Rotax powered (we don't know what caused this one so it may not be the engine)

and this Foxbat Rotax power engine failure.

So while I was   I was also half serious. There seems to be a string of Rotax failures.

 

I remember doing some training in accident investigation and they raised some statistics. It turned out that at one point in time the R-22 was at the same time the most dangerous and the safest helicopter to fly in. If you simply looked at accidents resulting in serious or fatal injuries the R-22 featured in significantly more crashes than any other helicopter. I think it was more than twice number 2... But if you simply divided that number by the number of hours flown by type per crash it was by far the safest (excluding types with no accident history and small numbers or new types). The B-206 was in a similar boat... Remember there are lies, damned lies, and then statistics....

 

[alf jessup]

Guess when you got over 55,000 Rotax engines world wide compared to 6000 Jabiru engines You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out which is the reliable one.

[M61A1]

5 hours ago, SplitS said:

South east of Melbourne (I think) Rotax powered coolant leak into cabin crashed into tree's

That one was a Subaru.

One also has to consider whether the engine failed or the installation caused a stoppage.

 

[Skyhog]

Just noticed one of the incident reports quoted earlier in this thread. My club sold this Foxbat to its current owner about 13 months ago. This aircraft was fitted with the Rotax 912 fuel injected engine when we sold it and had 993 hours to run. I can only presume the same engine was still fitted when it crashed seeing as a fuel tap was mentioned in the report. I was the one that went and picked it up from Natfly Temora 2013 after its static display duties were done. The dealer (who is a thoroughly good bloke) warned me about the fuel system with that engine. He said two things that were "very important".

1. If you run the engine with both fuel taps off, you'll destroy your fuel pumps ($3k each). This happened in the first incident report before an engine failure at YSBK.

2. If you run a tank out of fuel and get air in the fuel injection system, it could take "a few minutes" to clear it and have the engine running properly again. 

I was saddened to see this as it was a great aeroplane. Our club has had 2 Foxbats and now have a Vixxen. I can't see any reason why our next purchase wouldn't be an Aeroprakt product.👍🏻

Edited November 17, 2020 by Skyhog

[antonts]

2 hours ago, Skyhog said:

.

1. If you run the engine with both fuel taps off, you'll destroy your fuel pumps ($3k each).

2. If you run a tank out of fuel and get air in the fuel injection system, it could take "a few minutes" to clear it

typical behaviour of electrical high-pressure fuel pump without primary (feeding, lowpressure) pump or gravity feed. Dry run kills them very fast, and there is very little sucking if output (high pressure) is full of air. Especially risky if petrol evaporates due to heat, it never pumps out all these air bubbles and sometimes stops even by itself as it creates petrol vapor bubble in sucking line. Many years ago I had it on my truck with homemade injector modification with freestanding petrol pumps under frame, not inside tanks, where they had to create some vacuum to suck petrol. As temperature is above 35 and tanks are close to empty it could stop any moment  and required to drain air from high pressure line, so finally I installed special electrical drain valve there.

 

[SplitS]

7 hours ago, M61A1 said:

That one was a Subaru.

One also has to consider whether the engine failed or the installation caused a stoppage.

 

I had 2 mixed up Lancefield vic was a 912 I knew there was 4 but did not look up the incidents, You are right the coolant leak Gippsland was a subaru.

There are a lot of Jab's flying a lot of hours in OZ.

Rotax the current trend is not your friend.

Jabs should be more reliable they are way less complicated.

Also R22's use air-cooled engines just saying.

[RFguy]

IMO Rotax 912 is more tolerant of abuse by the operator. The water cooling buys that, and the cool  heads + tank return are more suitable for PULP. 

 

IMO Jab Gen4-HD  is an engine design finally with design bugs out, and should be  good engine, as long as the operator doesn't overheat it and (like all engines) observes keep-out vibration regions.

 

 

[M61A1]

5 hours ago, antonts said:

typical behaviour of electrical high-pressure fuel pump without primary (feeding, lowpressure) pump or gravity feed. Dry run kills them very fast, and there is very little sucking if output (high pressure) is full of air. Especially risky if petrol evaporates due to heat, it never pumps out all these air bubbles and sometimes stops even by itself as it creates petrol vapor bubble in sucking line. Many years ago I had it on my truck with homemade injector modification with freestanding petrol pumps under frame, not inside tanks, where they had to create some vacuum to suck petrol. As temperature is above 35 and tanks are close to empty it could stop any moment  and required to drain air from high pressure line, so finally I installed special electrical drain valve there.

 

Yes, there's a reason most vehicle manufacturers put the fuel pump in the tank.

[M61A1]

58 minutes ago, SplitS said:

Also R22's use air-cooled engines just saying.

R22s also have a well designed fan forced air cooling system and is unlikely to experience high power followed by shock cooling as they are generally at a high power setting the whole time the machine is airborne, very much unlike the average Lyc powered glider tug that gets many high power then back to zero cycles in a day then self destructs in less than a thousand hours.

Edited November 17, 2020 by M61A1

[Rastus]

2 hours ago, M61A1 said:

R22s also have a well designed fan forced air cooling system and is unlikely to experience high power followed by shock cooling as they are generally at a high power setting the whole time the machine is airborne, very much unlike the average Lyc powered glider tug that gets many high power then back to zero cycles in a day then self destructs in less than a thousand hours.

Both Lycosaurus powered Pawnees at my club make TBO with not too many issues.  Both have CHT monitors and one has cowl flaps.  Haven't had a cracked pot since the CHT gauges went in.  Tugmaster keeps an eye on cycle times to weed out cowboys.  

[M61A1]

 

🤣🤣 

50 minutes ago, Rastus said:

Tugmaster

🤣🤣🤣  Well at least someone at the gliding club has a sense of humour

[facthunter]

Dropping chutists is certainly not the best operating conditions for any engine but a cracked pot doesn't usually fail the engine. Good  fitting cowl gills is a requirement. to slow the cooling. Nev