A neighbor was missing 6 horses and asked me to check the desert surrounding his ranch to see if I could find them. I had intended to go flying today anyway as I wanted to check some areas for nesting Falcons. My other hobby is falconry, and I want to get a new hawk this spring for hunting.
No biggie, I can do both. I did find his horses and then proceeded to look for the Falcons. I landed on a Playa lake bed and proceeded to walk to the cliff that I wanted to check. When I returned, I turned on the Master switch, and no fuel pump clicking that I am used to. After checking and not being able to find what was wrong, I decided to start the engine and see if it would run. Keep in mind that I run my fuel line out of the tanks to a selector switch on the side of the pilot compartment. Then through a gascolator, up to a facett fuel pump then on the the pulse pump and to the carbs. about 4 feet lift.
It started right up and seemed to have enough power to fly, so I decided to take off, circle the lake bed in case the engine quit. I got it off the ground and began circling, it seemed to be doing alright, but I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get all the fuel that I needed to fly the way that I normally do. I was about 5 miles off the main hwy, but there was a field tht had been cleared of Sage that cut off some of the distance. There was no way that I could get a trailer in there to get the plane out, without the possibility of getting in trouble with the BLM, as the area was listed as a Study area, and they do not want you to be making tracks in there at all. About the time that I decided that it wasn't going to quit the EIS warning light came on. I have the EGT's set for 1330 degrees, as the engine leans out to stop somewhere below 1500. The EGT's were showing 1420 and going up. I quickly throttled back and at 5000 RPM's it began to sink down to 1410. I circled a nother time and it stayed at that temp and I was still flying, so I decided to head to the Hwy, thinking that if worse came to worse I could make an emergency landing there and hope that no one ran me over afterward.
Now I am much too impatient to fly at that low a speed, and I wasn't sure that I could maintain altitude at the level, but it did, even though I felt that I was slowly sinking into the ground. I nursed it home, flying over the road and back to my strip with no problem, but I was pretty wet under the arms, and dry in the mouth when I did land.
The moral of this story is - Don't rule these pulse pumps out. They work better than you think.
Here is a video of the event.
https://vimeo.com/163326173 password- owyheeflyer
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