July 25th at about 8 am flight from John Day to Prineville, OR for an airport day breakfast, midway across Waterman Flat at 7,500? I heard a loud bang and moderate vibration from my VW 2180 cc engine. I had just passed a ranch airstrip so at a reduced throttle setting did a 180 and headed back, then the engine lost power and stopped. A bit of advice, don?t be to quick punch in the next waypoint as I did, tried to dial up the ranch strip without success and after two attempts decided that flying the aircraft was a higher priority. Could not see the strip through the windscreen, right front and side was somewhat obscured by oil, made a hard turn to the right and rolled left and was pleasantly surprised to see the strip directly below. Made a successful landing followed by a five mile hike down rough ranch roads to the ranch headquarters. Beautiful strip: paved 5,000? x 75?. The ranch covers about 140,000 acres and has log cabins higher up in the hills for fly-in guests; big game hunting and trout fishing. Google it up on a satellite map, about fifteen miles east of Mitchell, Oregon. Retrieved my KR2 a few days later, and pulled the head and offending piston this morning. Appears that the exhaust valve head separated and was swallowed by the engine. The rod and crank continued to function, piston remained attached to the rod but with that big hole compression was nil, the crankcase appears to be intact. Will complete the teardown, have the crank and rod magna-fluxed. Hopefully with a new head and piston/cylinder set and small parts it will get put back together??? If not its been a hoot, thirty and a half years and 1,501.1 hours of fun with a few minutes of terror thrown in. Dave F Emailing: DSCN1098.jpg https://onedrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=336dacedf2a83c11&page=browse&resid=336DACEDF2A83C11!137&parId=336DACEDF2A83C11!105&type=5&authkey=!ANYqI13PoqdjQrc&Bsrc=Photomail&Bpub=SDX.Photos Your message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments: DSCN1098.jpg
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