12th January 2005, I was doing circuits, as per normal, in quite a gusty 10 to 18 knots 30 degree cross wind and it was quite cool. After half an hour of circuits I was climbing out and at about 600ft the engine lost power. This is the second time this happed, the first time I thought I was low on fuel.
THE SECOND TIME: The prior landing was a long glide approach, touch and go, climb to 500ft, turn left while still climbing at 80 knots, then a big loss of power, nose down, yep I can make the strip, split ass turn and line up for a down wind landing, during the nose down push and turn I also turned on the electric boost, I still had more than half a tank of fuel. The engine is still running but rough and now I'm to high and fast to land on the strip, sacrifice some speed for hight, back up to 700ft, and decide to continue to the downwind end of the strip and land into wind. Oh, yea, I remember fitting that carby heat knob when I fitted the new engine (we don't have them in gliders), pull the carby heat on, start my turn back to line up and as I'm nearly lined up the engine smoothed out and started to pull like a train, so I continued my turn and circled up to 1000ft AGL without missing a beat. I joint a late downwind, staying with in glide of the strip, and did a normal base and final to an 8.5 out of 10 landing. I taxied back to the hanger, changed my underwear, and removed the cowling to check the fuel filter, all was OK. Did some more circuits, now using the carby heat on all descents, no problems. So now I've learnt about carby icing. :-) This can also be found on the bottom of my WEB page http://www.users.bigpond.com/kr2/tales.htm regards Barry Kruyssen Cairns, Australia RAA 19-3873 k...@bigpond.com http://www.users.bigpond.com/kr2/kr2.htm
