All the Right Stuff
by Tom Martin

After attending the first annual Rocket 100 race at Taylor, Texas we started our return trip the next day, November 12, 2006.  Ed Perl was my passenger in my Team Rocket EVO 1 and Wayne Hadath was flying with us, in his F1 rocket.  Early in the morning we checked the weather and it was obvious that we were not going to get farther north than the southern border of Ohio. 

Rather than sit around we decided to take a short hop, fifty minutes south, down to see the museum at Galveston Texas.  The airport is right on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the visibility was spectacular.  

We stayed there for a couple of hours and then started our trip north.  Based on forecasts, Louisville, KY., was as far north as we were going to able to get so we set that as our destination.  For this portion of the trip we had no wind to a slight tailwind and we were seeing ground speeds in the 190 to 200 knot range.  Life was good.  This route took us over central Louisiana.  This region is thinly forested, mostly uninhabited with clearings few, and far apart.  It is used extensively by the US government and there are quite a few MOAs, Military Operation Areas,  that need to be flown around, under, or over. 

We were enjoying the scenery and chatting back and forth between the aircraft.  As I was more heavily loaded, with a passenger, Wayne would go up and down in search of better winds. This worked well as he has a problem holding altitude anyway.  For some reason he is reluctant to give in to the seductive new crop of autopilots.  Fifty-five hundred feet seemed to be the best compromise and Louisiana left us and we were now flying over eastern Arkansas.  Our track skirted along west of the Mississippi River and we were enjoying the majesty of that busy thoroughfare.  We flew west of Memphis and by this time a couple of hours had gone by and we were looking for a fuel stop within the next half hour.

Things had been going too well.  About 15 minutes north of Memphis there was a sudden, and very attention-getting roar of noise, in the cockpit.  I could feel vibrations in the floor and through the firewall.  A quick check of the engine monitor showed nothing wrong but I knew we had a potentially major problem.  I called out for my passenger, Ed, to find an airport.  Meanwhile I reduced power, and noticed both a reduction in vibration and noise. It was still very loud, alarmingly so, and it was coming from the engine compartment.  Ed was having some problems getting orientated with map, so I hit the nearest button on the GPS.  There was an airport immediately behind us, 2 nm, so punched it in and turned left. 

I radioed Wayne, that we had a problem and that we were going down now!  I gave him the designator 7M4, Osceola, AR and then returned to the business of getting the airplane on the ground fast.  By this time my guess was an exhaust problem and I had concerns about hot gasses in the engine compartment.  All of this happened in less than 30 seconds. 

I was now on course for the airport at a rapid rate of descent.  I kept partial power in place until I was sure that we had the airport and then I joined a straight in downwind for the main runway.  Usually if you pull the throttle back too far, too fast, on this airplane it gives a very impressive backfiring display. Now it sounded downright scary.  On short final I fully reduced power and dropped in for an uneventful -- but loud -- landing.  A very short taxi off the main runway, and I quickly shut it down.

Now it was quiet, we were safe, and there was no fire; big sigh of relief.  Meanwhile Wayne had joined us on the ground.  At the time I was not aware of the fact that he had done a high-speed pass over the runway to make sure that we had gotten down safely.  I would guess that we were on the ground in less than two minutes. We were very fortunate not to have had this happen over Louisiana! 

Wayne disputes my memory of having made a transmission to him regarding the airport.  I may not have, or I did and it was too loud to be clear, or he forgot, things were happening fast and at that time I was not really all that concerned about him!  He thought I was going to land on the road.  This is the second time that Wayne has thought that I was going to land on a road when a perfectly good runway was available.  Sometimes I wonder about that boy.

Let me describe the airport.  It is in the middle of a rural agricultural area with a few scattered fields of not yet harvested cotton.  The runway was quite nice but the buildings were old and had a very abandoned look to them. The mice and rats had moved out years ago. There is no shop or mechanic on the field. The village was miles away and there were very few homes close to us.  By this time I was under the plane and had discovered that yes, it was an exhaust issue.  My tail pipe, on the left side had broken at the ball joint just aft of the number five cylinder.  It was three o’clock, Sunday afternoon, in the middle of nowhere.

Out came the tools and we start to take the cowling off.  A local gentleman, Jim, slowly walked over to us from a hangar he had been working in.  He was sympathetic and lent us a needed socket wrench.  A silver dodge pickup truck, complete with rear window gun rack, pulled into the lane and parked a couple of hundred feet from us. The two occupants of the truck sat and watched us.  The dueling banjos theme song from the movie Deliverance started to echo in my mind. 

With the cowling removed, I was starting to feel a bit discouraged about repairs to this exhaust system.  I had one hose clamp and I was thinking that with another clamp and an old license plate I might be able to make a patch that would hold. Flying with this kind of Band Aid fix was not a very appealing option.

Then, with the three of us, not counting the local and the observing pickup boys, discussing our options a light bulb came on and I started to laugh.  Wayne had, in his baggage compartment a complete brand new exhaust system that we were taking back to Ontario for another builder!  Before we left Mark Fredrick’s Team Rocket shop he had asked if we would mind delivering the exhaust system.  It was a big box and we did not really want to take it but it would help Mark and the builder out so we crammed it in before our departure.  What are the odds of having an exhaust failure in an aircraft and having a complete new system that would bolt right on? We were all laughing by now.  With the exception of the boys in the truck, they were still watching.

This is about the time the police showed up.  A squad car pulled right in front of the plane and the officer leaned out the window and asked if we had a problem.  He was polite, but quite serious.  After we explained the situation, he got out and motioned to the pickup truck boys.  They pulled their truck over in front of Wayne’s plane; we were not going anywhere.  It turns out that the pickup truck boys had been over at the gun club shooting rounds and I had startled them when I went over at high speed, making a bunch of noise. 

These unmuffled six cylinder engines have a very nice sound under normal circumstances but having the pipe broken off in the cowling, and the back fires, really upped the sound effects.  Then Wayne roared past them at probably 250 mph while checking to see if I was on the ground OK.  The locals probably thought they were under attack, and from the gun club they called the cops.

While I was busy removing the old system, Ed and Wayne reassured the residents that we were legitimate and the air warmed considerably.  The cop was now quite helpful and offered us transportation for supplies if needed.  The replacement went fast and within 45 the cowlings were back on.  By this time the airport manager had shown up and Wayne and I both fueled up from a suspiciously old tank. While paying for the fuel, cash only, the manager told us that we were his first fuel customers that month!  This was not very reassuring but our options were limited.

With two hours of daylight left we set course north for Bowling Green Ky.  We spent the night there, and part of the next day, while waiting for the ceilings to lift before our trip was continued.

The mystery of the broken exhaust remains just that. This is the first such failure the manufacturer has had of this nature and he has thousands of similar systems in use. It was a potentially dangerous situation that turned out to be a humorous anecdote to our trip due the fact that with us, we had, All the Right Stuff.

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his story appeared in the February 28, 2009 issue of the RV Builder's Hotline.