I am happy to say my training payed off. Always fly like your engine is going to quit and you need a place to land.

I finally joined the club, the engine out club on February seventeenth 2023. My friend John Rychner had a piston blow a few months earlier. He said he got lucky and found a spot to land immediately on his trike. I posted my troubles on FB and many people believe there was a propeller strike at one point. I bought my Air Conception Tornado 280 off of eBay. The previous owner probably did have a prop strike. I am very thorough with pre and post flight inspections. In this case there was nothing I could have identified as an issue. The crank bolt was cracked and finally broke which flung the sprocket out of the crank case.

Fortunately, I remained fairly calm. I do have to admit I was overly excited and my landing was good but I became hyper focused on the only bush in the field. Cracked myself up that is what I landed in. I rewatched my helmet GoPro and at one point I was looking to the left of the bush but for some strange reason, I insisted on landing in the bush. I could not run through it so I fell onto my knees. One of the bush branches scratched my face. Minor injury that hurt less than my injured pride.

Laurent from Air Conception covered the warranty work. The warranty ran out in March 2023 so I just made it. Eric Dufour from Paratour did the re-work on the crank case. After completely reassembling the engine, the starter did not work. Back to the shop to get the Bendix replaced. [Update] Now every thing is working like new.

Soon I will be back in the sky loving the air time. I will have to thoroughly test the engine on the ground to build my confidence in the motor. I will also launch from an area where I can land if need be. I am sure it will take some time to trust my engine. There are strange things that happen when you have a motor out. Like finding poop in your pants when you land. hahaha

Happy Flying!

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