ARLA/CLUSTER: Projecto de recriação do ultimo voo de Amélia Earhart continua a chamar do Pacifico

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Project Earhart flight still in New Zealand

A test over New Zealand’s north island by the light aircraft on the Project
Amelia Earhart flight put an earlier problem down to an airlock in the
plane’s fuelling system.

A week ago the historic flight by *Brian Lloyd WB6RQN* left Hamilton gained
21,000 feet attitude and headed for Pago Pago in American Samoa when the
engine started to splutter and stop.

The pilot took his single engine aircraft to a lower altitude, and with
some fiddling of the mixture, throttle and electric fuel boost landed
safely on Great Barrier Island.

After an inspection there he took off again headed for Hamilton and was
given a priority by air traffic control.

Back in Hamilton, where he had already spent a week resting, the problem
was carefully examined.

Writing on Facebook today (July 21) he said: “ At this point we think it
was a ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that produced an age-old problem -
vapour lock.’

In terms easily understood by pilots, he explained the fuel began to boil
in the fuel line and turn into vapour.

Once the airplane was lower in altitudes, cooler, and with the electrical
fuel pump running, the vapour lock went away and the engine ran normally
again.

Brian WB6RQN said: “ I suspect that if I had turned off the electrical fuel
pump the engine would have kept running, but for some reason I was not
motivated to experiment at that point.�

He subscribes to a service called SavvyAnalysis which takes digital engine
data and tries to figure out what is going on.

Cleaning the filter screens and removing any restriction restored the
margin so vapour lock is unlikely to happen again.

During the test flight, which was monitored air traffic control, he took
the plane to 23,000 feet and tried to replicate the same circumstances of
the earlier aborted flight, but did not have a problem.

Brian WB6RQN, a 62-year old Texan, is yet to announce the resumption of his
Pacific Ocean flight leg that includes dropping a floral wreath in respect
on Howland Island, where the Earhart flight disappeared in 1937, before
returning to the USA.

*Jim Linton VK3PC*
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