Flight To Oshkosh, Wisconsin, July 2011

Sunday evening, Aug. 21

First, I want to apologize for not finishing this saga sooner - I've had lots of concerned e-mails and phone calls about what happened and why did my engine die. But since I've been home - 2 whole weeks now - I have been focusing on family, farm, and getting the Talon repaired. And, to be honest, I've also been beating myself up for that abysmal landing and just didn't want to deal with having to write about it.

So...cutting to the chase...my engine died because I ran out of gas!!!

Backing up two weeks:
When we took the Talon out of Humongous Harry (as I called the truck in which I brought the Talon home) everyone wanted to know "What happened?!?!?" The guys swarmed around it, looking for reasons why the engine might have quit. Nothing was immediately apparent.

The next morning Griff wanted to start it up and see if he could figure out what had made it die. He immediately discovered that the gas tank was empty.

("Discovered?" you ask. "Why didn't you discover it when you were in the wheat field?" Because all we wanted to do was get the plane out of there. We didn't do any troubleshooting and I'm not sure any of us where even aware that the gas tank was empty when we were turning it right side up, getting it out of the field, and loading it into HH. How could we miss it? Because there were four of us grunting and heaving and we didn't have a sense of how much it should weigh (if it had gas) compared to how much it did weigh.We weren't consciously listening for sloshing in the tank.)

Griff added some gas - and it started up immediately and ran perfectly! He couldn't replicate the engine out. So - how did that happen? Did it drain out of the overflow tube when it was upside down all night? Was there a leak in the aluminum tank? Hole in a fuel line? Mechanical pump spewing forth gas? What was especially puzzling was that there was absolutely no gas odor when the fire chief and I went out to look at it 90 minutes or so after I upended, and no leakage. And nothing was gas-saturated as I'd expect if there was a leak - not my sleeping bag, not the fabric bags holding clothes and other miscellaneous stuff, not the wiping rags stuffed next to the tank. (I had taken all this stuff out and put it in the cab of the fire chief's truck, so we KNOW there was no gas-saturated fabric.)

A few pilots were insistent that I had just forgotten to refuel at Miles City, and had simply run out of gas. They were so convinced of their own conclusion that I began to doubt myself - until I checked my log AND my credit card statement. Yup, I HAD filled up and was carrying 17 gallons of gas when I took off.

Then things started to come together. Wayne, who had been flying higher than I and in visual contact, mentioned that he had seen something that looked like dandelion puffs coming out of the back of my plane. He was puzzled, and attributed it to the evening light playing on the golden fields. When Dave Richards, a pilot who sometimes helps the NTSB do accident investigations in our area, heard that he immediately said, "You had a leak. Dandelion puffs are what av gas looks like when it's evaporating."

We finally determined that the lever on the drain valve, which was not safety-wired, had vibrated open just a tiny bit, probably due to the way I had packed. When the drain valve was installed, I was assured that it would "never come open in flight, due to how the valve lever is positioned." Probably correct under normal flying circumstances, but not when packed for a 3-week cross country flight. Hard way to learn a simple lesson. Yet when I look at the limited damage (so limited that the FSDO rep told me not to bother filing an incident report - just to get it fixed and get in the air again!) I am very, very aware how lightly both I and the Talon got off.

Wrapping this all up:

Perhaps the person most affected by everything that went wrong during this entire flight was Norm. When I finally got home after putting the Talon in its hangar, Norm didn't greet me with big hugs and kisses as he usually does when we've been separated. He was furious - so angry that he almost couldn't talk. We've been married long enough that I knew not to push him. The next day, Sunday, he told me how upset he'd been during much of the flight: the radio problems, the brake problems, and then the cockpit fire at Oshkosh. The accident was the final straw. (He had never let on during our nightly phone calls - was always interested and supportive of my recounting of the day's flying events.)

"I've been doing a lot of thinking about this, and I've finally decided to put my foot down." He said in a taut voice. I immediately tensed up. I know he doesn't like my long flights, always worries. But "put his foot down"?

"You didn't give yourself enough time to prepare for this flight. We had our Norwegian family here until two days before you left! Well, that's NEVER going to happen again! Before your next long flight, you're going to have a full week with no company, no work, nothing to do but get ready for the flight!"

I don't think I have to say anything more about why I love this guy so much! I also didn't tell him that everything had tested out fine when I left - because I know that having a week to prepare certainly can't hurt.

In ending this blog -

• I've been told I need to rename my plane, from The Wandering Wench to The Wounded Wench. I think I'll just put a vertical arrow on the pod pointing up - that ought to be enough!

• I blog fairly regularly on AOPA's website. Take a look and let me know if you enjoy it.
http://blog.aopa.org/letsgoflying/?cat=11

• I want to thank all of you who have been reading this and especially those of you who have been sending comments. I'm now in a frame of mind where I can start responding to your e-mails personally, so if you've written, expect to hear from me!