John tell us about the info before the flight if you don't care. Did the engine sound fine during run up? How about engine monitoring, any info on that, temps, etc.. What was the comp. on cylinder during annual? How many hours on the engine?
Congrats on a job well done.
The pre-flight was completely normal. If anything even better than usual. We just had our annual 6.9 (tach) hours ago. We flew to Everglades City after that (across the everglades and over Lake Okeechobee).
On the pre-flight we had 5.5 qts of oil and I added 1 more. We pumped the primer 3 times as usual and it fired up almost immediately (that was the part that was better than usual, it usually takes a few seconds and maybe two tries to start after a week layoff). Oil pressure was fine, vacuum, ammeter all good. Run-up, mag check etc were good.
This engine does have a history though, which I have posted before. It has about 1700 SMOH. (Penn Yan 180 upgrade, 25 years ago). It would use about 1 qt of oil every 1.5 or 2 hours; within spec, but still high oil burn. CHT on #4 would rise to over 420 on initial climb, but always settled down as soon as we would level off, usually at 1000 ft because we KOMN is within Daytona's Class Charlie outer ring. After that it was alwasy fine. She would always climb fast, even with four big people and full fuel.
This trip, #4 CHT didn't get as hot as usual on initial climb (maybe 400, but it settled right down to about 380 pretty quickly after leveling off). We were then cleared for frequency change and we requested flight following and received clearance to climb to 3500. After a few minutes I noticed the engine monitor reporting #1 CHT at 400, which it has never reached before and my wife said she didn't seem to have power to climb normally. About then DAB ATC called and asked why we were not climbing. We reported lack of power and engine heat and told them we were going to attempt to return to KOMN even though KXFL was 5 minutes closer. But then the engine started banging so we declared an emergency and headed to KXFL. Then the engine quit and after a few seconds glide we determined we probably wouldn't make the runway so we picked out a highway and told ATC where were going. The landing would have been perfect except for that darn red pickup truck that seemed to be racing us so we had to flare and drop to the left (to avoid the power lines on the right). The bounce put us in the median and up on the other side of the divided highway into oncoming traffic. Traffic on that side was much more cooperative and they all stopped well in front of us so the only air frame damage was a superficial ding on the leading edge of the left wing from a road sign that jumped out at us.
Cops, fire trucks, ambulances, the KXFL airport manager. a couple of linesman and the owner of the maintenance shop were on site within minutes. They hooked Lima (N426HL) up to a tow bar behind a pickup truck and towed her back to the airport.
The worst parts of the whole day were the 30 seconds that the engine was banging, before it quit, and the time we had to spend waiting for FSDO to arrive and then the interview and inspection. But they were very nice. It seemed to help that we attend flight safety meetings monthly and participate in FAASAFETY.GOV wings program.
They did take my all my maintenance records and logs but I posted the compression ratios, as best as I could remember them, in post #9.
All in all, we feel very lucky. Training and practice payed off. We almost never took a flight where wouldn't find some random time to ask the other what we would do if we lost an engine right then. But practice doesn't tell you how you will react in a real emergency. But as it turns out, if you follow your training you don't have time to panic. We just worked as a team the way we practiced. In answer to a previous question, NO, I never even thought about taking the controls from Leslie. She was doing everything by the book.
This weekend we had to look for things to do because we couldn't fly so we did a little landscaping in the yard. My birthday is in 4 weeks and we were planning a trip. I am hoping we can get back up by then, but that may be pushing it.
Sorry, I didn't mean to write a book.
