.

When I saw that prop I see what looks like 2 undamaged blades which made me think dead engine when he landed . The bounce and roll maybe broke that one blade. I could be wrong

I find it weird how the rear keel broke so cleanly off. Anyone else ?

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It sure looks as if the keel was cut by a huge force.
So we know props don't have enough inertia to do such thing.
The only thing capable doing it is the rotor blades.
As the folding mast was breaking backward one of the blades cut it.
You can visualize the blades taking the vertical path as the mast folds.
It is consistent with the cut line and you can see clearly on the picture the rest of the blade is missing.
Don't forget these are the heavy duty 8" blades and not the 7" cord.
Lots of inertia.
Probably what saved him. He was grossly over bladed.
He weights what? Like a jar of peanut butter?

NOT

Hen, just out of interest, why would the blue head be more unreliable than a grey head or 503? What is the difference between a grey and blue head? Are they not basically the same motor? Or is it a cold seizing thing from different cooling in the blue head?

Blue heads have a very different coolant setup from the gray head.
They both seize up and mostly coming from the absence of thermostat.
Expansion values are different between the steel rings and pins compared to the alloy pistons.
That 160 degrees F is important for that reason.
Most guys run the damn thing at 120 without thermostat.
503 is air cooled soooooooo

The Grey head (mod 90)and the blue head (mod 99) are slightly different.
The Blue head uses a liquid damper on the flywheel, and a ceramic water pump seal since the grey head was known to have leak issues.
The biggest difference is in the Cyl head cooling, The Mod 99 uses a bypass to allow some of the warm coolant to circulate around the cylinders and head at all times, this keep the cylinders from shock cooling.
If you go from high power (takeoff) and then throttle back and descend, the radiator does a great job of cooling the engine and the thermostat closes, then you buzz the runway at max power after your engine is cool, and right about the time that you are too far away to make it back to the runway, all that cool water (coolant) in the radiator gets let into the engine when the thermostat opens, and the rush of cooled coolant causes the cylinder liners to shrink and squeezes the hell out of the pistons and makes them stop.

The Mod 99 bypass is a good improvement. Just some rotax trivia: The 618 had all the mods that the blue head uses, plus the RAVE valves, the 618 was the BEST liquid cooled rotax 2 stroke ever.
But it was competing with the 80hp 912 at the time so they dropped it.

Any update on John? I hope he is ok?

Darren,Phil or Greg, you guys know anything?

Everyone...John is fine...his right shoulder was very bruised and he is healing up.

He did not discuss what will happen to the gyro but I think he is going to rebuild it or sell it as is..not sure.

I will call him and ask him how he's doing now.

Thank you. Say hi to him and tell him we are glad he is still hurting and not freaking dead!
Hurting is better.......

In the photo posted, to me it looks as though all 3 blades of the Warp are shorn off at about 18". It would be easy to determine what broke the keel. A witness mark from a blade strike would be very evident as it would have impacted the LH side and crushed and bent it before it broke. I have also seen a clean break before purely from a "whiplash" effect.

Update....

Talked to John...all is good. Except the none ride ambulance ride that never happened nor did he receive care or service and they sent him a bill for 5g and if that were not enough the helicopter ride that he eventually went for is going for 40K and a sling at the hospital which was
all he needed in the end was 50 bucks!!!

So it looks like only his wallet (rebuild and co pay/ deductible) is the only real fallout or injury suffered.

He's bummed though cuz he got his arm out of the sling and now he does not have anything to fly.

He sold his trike some time again cuz he had a gyro (the one crashed) then also had an Apollo which he sold to some one in china
to help Abid and figured he had a gyro to fly until this.

He gave up his old Apollo in the hopes of getting a new generation upgraded Newer Apollo so that was not a problem anyway.

The guy sure has a good constitution and is ready to get back on that horse!!! Yippie...good for him!! 72 and still rockin.

We will see him around as soon as he can get something to fly for sure. Englishmen are hard to kill!!