A few weeks ago my fiancee and I were on a trip from Los Angeles, CA to Austin, TX. This was my fiancee's longest trip yet in the RV-7A (tip-up). So far she has made a dozen flights and she has enjoyed all of them (Las Vegas, Napa, El Mirage, Big Bear, etc). She was looking forward to this longer series of flights with stops in AZ and NM along the way.
We were on the last leg of the outbound trip, 2pm, and had been flying for 3 hours with Flight Following and were 80 NM west of KAUS level at 13.5k in clear skies, on oxygen, with George doing the flying. At altitude it was cool and smooth with a 35-40 kt tailwind, a perfect day for flying. Down low it was almost 100 degrees and very very bumpy.
Just prior to starting our decent I asked her to make sure her seat belt was on and secured. She had taken it off for a little while to stretch and relax. Never, ever, fly without your seat belt buckled, remember this. Once she had that accomplished I moved pillows and stuff from the cabin to the baggage area to clean up the cockpit. I contacted Flight Following and noted that we were beginning our descent. I entered a 400 ft/min autopilot managed descent, leaving the power as it was for the whole flight so far, full power - LOP. As we passed through 12k ft I turned to place something else into the baggage area.
As I turned facing forward the airplane instantly pitched nose over with negative g's and what seemed like explosive decompression as the cabin filled with everything that wasn't tied down and we were floating in our seat belts. Extreme noise and wind engulfed us. I muttered something like "what the ****" a couple of times as I reached for the stick, staring at the earth filling the windscreen in partial shock. My hand and brain finally started working and while numbly praying that the tail was still attached began to pull back on the stick at the same time I decreased power and shut power to the AP. The plane responded thankfully. Initially my brain thought that the canopy had come off and perhaps hit the tail but I finally came to understand with what was going on. Looking up, the canopy was completely open but was still attached and bucking wildly about 2 feet above the roll bar. The wind noise was unbelievable and maps, pillows and stuff was whirling around and getting sucked out. I leveled the plane and slowed to 85 kts which seemed like eternity. At that speed I was able to grab the canopy and asked my fiancee if she could hold it in place as it was impossible to pull it shut enough to latch the roll bar latch. I asked her to hold it since I didn't want it to continue to oscillate up and down potentially smacking the rollbar.
After I had the plane under control I radioed "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday 447RV has an open canopy". First Mayday for me, it came out without even thinking. The call went unheard by Flight Following because of the wind noise on the mic but another pilot in the area heard it faintly and I could hear him ask FF if they heard it. I repeated the call and with a hand covering the mic was able to communicate. I'm happy I was wearing my QT Halo in-the-ear headset. Standard headsets may have gotten ripped off our heads. We received vectors to Fredericksburg (T82) and they were extremely helpful. Unfortunately the turbulence was almost moderate and the winds at T82 were 30 kts gusting to 40, almost a direct crosswind. It was an ugly landing with my fiancee holding onto the canopy the entire time, but we were on the ground. We headed for the terminal to check our shorts. Inside I called the FAA to let them know we were OK and asked them if they needed any paperwork filled. They said nothing to fill out, glad you are OK, have a nice day!
To give you an example of how violent the pitch over was, both my fiancee's lower legs and ankles were bruised and swollen from smacking the underside of the panel and cockpit sides. If she hadn't had her seat belt on it may have been an uglier story as she weighs about 100 and I hate to think of the other possible outcomes. My legs were cut on the front and back and on both arms from I have no idea what. My iPad took several minutes to locate and it had moved from between the seats to forward of the rudder pedals, and it was dented. Her phone which was in the passenger side cloth pocket near the gear leg weldment was eventually located on the pilots side of the cabin, forward of the panel, resting vertically on the L-channel above the leftmost rudder cable. Most of the maps are gone. Pillows gone too.
So what happened? As with any incident it's a series or combination of errors/mistakes/omissions that lead to these kind of situations. Two things have to happen so this can happen again. The safety latch must be open and the canopy latch must be open. The safety latch has no positive detent or latch to keep it in the closed position. It's easily moved with a pillow getting tossed into the back. If this is closed, the problem of an open canopy latch in flight is fairly trivial. So how did the canopy latch open? I do not know for sure Yet, but one of two ways is most suspect. I may have opened it with my left arm/shirt sleeve when swiveling/turning to place items to the back. I tested this scenario and it's entirely possible. My canopy latch mechanism and spring are in good shape but it is possible that this can occur. Second possible cause is that I added a 1/32 foam spacer on top of the roll bar where the canopy shuts and it may have altered the geometry of the latching mechanism. I've had the foam spacer in place for 75 hours of flight time with no incident but perhaps that in combination with a high airspeed descent may have had some effect. The only change from the prior three hours of flight was a slightly nose down attitude and higher airspeed.
The plane is down for it's annual now. I'm not sure I'll ever figure out exactly what happened but I did remove the foam tape and I will put some mechanism in place to keep the safety latch from turning accidentally.
So does my fiancee still fly with me? Well after I inspected the plane on the ground at T82 (and removed the foam tape) she got back in and we continued our trip to Austin, the extreme crosswind takeoff and turbulence boring in comparison to the last flight. A few days later she got back in and we flew back to Los Angeles, CA through some of the nastiest summer turbulence she had ever been in and she didn't even complain about that. We had a great time in Austin but the "incident" as it's now known is not easily forgotten. She still says it was the scariest most frightening thing that's ever happened to her. Uh, me too
. For a few seconds there, wow. Remember, just fly the plane, and keep your seat belt on too!
