.

AIRCAM Bolt missed - sad .... I came across this a couple months ago but was reluctant to post it ..... As far as I know the Lockwood Aircam is a very good and safe design .... Loftus built one and I love it .

Build thread viewtopic.php?t=3743

Today I was cleaning up some old stuff on my computer and came across the Kathryn's Report of the accident and decided to post it as educational example of an inadvertent builder error that nobody could see during inspection and had a sad fatal outcome.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2019/06/l ... ident.html

In summary ... each wing has two struts which fit over a set of brackets and the bolts are installed ..... in this case the left wing struts were not lined up when the bolts were installed ..... struts should have been pushed another 1/2" further to line up with the brackets .... and as mentioned earlier the miss could not be spotted visually during inspection.

.

I just came across this!!! Holy crap. Yeah, builder's error for sure. I'm surprised everything stayed in place for taxiing. Maybe hard to spot after bolts inserted, but clearly unforgivable that holes in brackets were not lined up before inserting bolts.,

http://ultralightaircraftaustralia.com/ ... enstra.pdf

Reminds me of an Australian (of Dutch decent) ultralight builder here... his name was Sander Veenstra... he designed and flew the 'Thermite' aircraft, among others... he was really big on the V tails... he died one day because he connected the aileron cables back to front ... obviously didn't do a preflight to check the ailerons were doing the right thing... he went to take off and it dropped a wing.... then proceeded to keep the wing going down until it crashed inverted.


It just goes to show how important a preflight is, especially when wings have to be removed and controls disconnected and re connected... and how important it is to either clearly mark the correct fitting, or better still, make it impossible to connect wrong.


I was into ultralights at the time,mostly stuff like Eiper GT's, thrusters and drifters.... I was even part owner of the SV1..... after Sanders accident, I realised that the difficulty of storing or transporting something with wings and things that can be 'got wrong' when disassembling and reassembling... so I ended up going to the 'dark side' (much to some/most ultralight friends disgust) and chose gyros.... I liked the idea that you could see all of the frame and controls and that removing the blades didn't interfere with the primary controls... that and that wind wasn't such an issue.

We had a guy just out of Adelaide replace a head bearing for a friend and installed the bearing block upside down. He test flew it himself and the bearing slipped out and rotors and The top half the head left the machine at about 10ft AGL. No one injured but a wrecked machine. He was lucky the bearing wasn’t a tighter fit.

I did an accident investigation at one stage and found no lock pin in the teeter bolt castle nut. (It wasn’t the cause of the accident). Ever since then, whenever I took the lock pin out to remove the bolt and install the rotors I put the pin between my lips to remind me to reinstall it.

Sheeesh!! And all this time I just thought you had a 'hair lip'?

Something similar happened in Texas (I think) a few years ago .... excellent pilot .... meticulous builder .... decided to replace rotor head bearing but had the block upside down.

One of those things that can trick the mind because it "looks correct" on the bench ... but in reality the load path is opposite to what your brain is thinking.

Friction kept it together until he was 200+ feet in the air before it let go.

Correct! That was Steve Weir and his green dragonfly. Sad sad story.

I remember that rig, if its the one I'm thinking of he used a weed wacker motor for his pre-rotator. I thought it was a great idea.

Yes, that was Steve... I think he had had a few flights already before the bearing pulled out

That was my favorite open frame machine, and yeah Benry, it had the weed wackercomplete with chrome expansion chamber on it. Worked well

Edit: This was Steve's machine before he owned it..... The pilot liked dragging it off the ground at (or behind) the power curve...

Here is the video of that gyro losing it's rotor on takeoff....

Where was that one Muz?

the guy had changed his head bearings and reversed them..

Hi Tim... according to the tail number starting with PU.... it seems to be Brazil's ultralight numbers....

I just found it on youtube...

How are you doing these days? Once this virus BS is over, must come and see you .... only been talking about it for like.... years

I’m in the high risk category Muz but we’ll certainly have to catch up when CoVid is clear. Are you still at the same place?

I was at Landsborough, but moved to Peachester... still there/here

My phone number has changed tho... it is 850234 with 0484 in front

See an ultralight went down at Helensvale today.... should have been at home self vegitating?

.

Another similar tragedy was when Dan Grochowski lost his rotorhead when the nut & bolt came off . He was an excellent machine shop owner who got into gyros and had already built 10 or more and was preparing to become a kit supplier in a big way.

He also had great sucess with his custom designed floats , he really liked flying off water. Dan was not an "internet forum guy" or publicity seeker ... so a couple of PRA guys including Tom Milton made the long drive to visit him and got pictures around 2006. They were all impressed. He was even restoring an early Hiller Helicopter with the Franklin engine.

The following year Dan was making a few changes and improvements on his prototype gyro .... he wanted everything "perfect" before he started manufacturing his kits ..... plus he wanted to have a good inventory of machined parts on the shelf so customers could get quick service.

When he installed the rotor bearing , he noticed the steel washer under the nut was a couple of thousands too big .... it was almost touching the outer race of the bearing (should only contact the inner race) ..... he made a note of it and some time later he machined a supply of the proper ones and had them in a drawer.

In the meantime he just hand tightened the nut on the rotor bearing but as the build progressed the nut was no longer visible and he forgot about it. On a test flight the rotor departed ... investigators said the nut had loosened a bit and normally the sloppy rotorhead would have given some warning and he could have landed .... but witness marks showed the (now slightly loose) steel washer started to rub on the rotating portion of the bearing and spun it off in a split second.

Family and friends watching from the ground said he realized instantly what had happened .... he shut the engine off and in the silence they could hear him cuss his "forgetfulness" all the way to the ground. What a tragedy.

I did not know him personally but knew he was restoring the Hiller and had sent him some leads for spare parts

There were some videos of many of his flights but the family has since made them private .

But if you google ...... "Sky Tec Gyroplane" .... some pictures show up.

More info on Dan on the "other" forum..https://www.rotaryforum.com/threads/sky ... ane.10501/

YES !!! .... that's the one .... thanks

I had some communication with the surviving family when they were trying to sell the Hiller Helicopter project and wondered if I had any advice ... so I contacted a couple of operators who were still doing ag work with Hillers .... but they said no .... they only used the model with the 305hp 540cu.in Lycoming with the beefier transmission .... what Dan had was an early Franklin engine around 178 hp .... good enough for a private pilot but that is about it ..... plus it would take a certified Hiller A&P to complete it .... big bucks for that .

The family has made the Youtube videos private but back in the day there were a lot of good ones with him hot-dogging around the lakes with his float equipped gyro ..... plus one where he launches his wheeled-gyro from his front yard .... not enough level ground so he pre-rotated to the max ... then actually had an up-ramp at the end of his short strip that launched him into the air .... looked crazy as hell but he knew what he was doing

.

As far as I know this may be the only video of him on floats .... not very good quality but gives a glimpse of him .

He loved water and would put on his bathing suit and go flying ...

.