Jump to content

Foxbat accident 14 Nov 2020


Recommended Posts

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

  • Agree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, planedriver said:

I think SplitS is simply :whistling::stirrer:

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.

  • Like 3
  • Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 by RFguy
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 :stirrer:  I was also half serious. There seems to be a string of Rotax failures.

 

  • Agree 3
  • Informative 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 :stirrer:  I was also half serious. There seems to be a string of Rotax failures.

 

Out of how many successful takeoffs?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 :stirrer:  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....

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

  • Winner 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 by Skyhog
  • Like 2
  • Informative 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 by M61A1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.  

  • Informative 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...