Hawkeye7A
Well Known Member
...on my way home from LOE. First off, let me say thanx to all the old friends and aquaintances and the new ones that once again made LOE the best fly-in of the year. We headed out in my '59 C172 spam can late Sunday morning like a lot of others doing a bit of scuddin' and things were getting clearer west of Deming just like the briefer said it would and Cathy and I were just a couple miles North of Benson, AZ(E95) decending through 7K preparing to let down in Tucson(TUS) to let her out to drive home. I did another scan of the instruments and my oil pressure and oil temp were falling rapidly. In fact, they were about at the lower peg before I could react! At first I thought maybe the instrument feed(voltage) went bad, but nothing else was affected. "$#!^" I said and then informed Cathy to tighten up her belt because I had to put her down at Benson. My next thought was that there's no way I can afford a new engine with all that I've put into the RV-7A I'm building that WILL fly next year. I was 3K+ AGL so I pulled the mixture, killed the mags, turned off the fuel, made another call to the CTAF with the "E" word included and circled the airport once while descending at 1500 fpm and about 110-120 IAS, turned off the master, made my approach on Rwy 28 and pulled a greaser, all the while the prop is windmilling and it didn't stop until the plane was almost done rolling. BTW, I had just enough momentum to roll off the active onto a taxiway. Then we had to pull/push it to the parking ramp. Turns out my spin-on oil filter adapter had come loose from the accessory case and dumped most of the oil overboard. Near as I can tell there was no damage to the engine. It still turns easily by hand. I called my primary instructor this morning and told him thanks for the engine out training he had given me almost 5 years ago. It must've stuck! Never really did have time to get nervous and somebody was obviously watching over us. It could've happened earlier over some much more desolate areas. Ain't no atheists in a cockpit.