Tempest lawsuit letter

[A64Pilot]

3 hours ago, bluehighwayflyer said:

I always thought TPMS was a fleet efficiency thing. Trying to decrease gas mileage losses due to improper tire inflation.  I never knew it had anything to do with crashes.  Regardless, I hate them too.  

CAFE (Corporate Average Fleet Economy) standards are irrelevant now, ever since it was decided that SUV’s and pickup trucks don’t count against CAFE standards anymore.

No it came from the Ford Explorer / Firestone tires debacle, (in my opinion)that of course was many things but Ford recommending 26 PSI on a tire didn’t help, then add in it was a top heavy SUV put on a small PU chassis and would roll over if you kicked it. Firestones rep said it best, if a tire fails your supposed to be able to pull over, not roll over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy

Read this and see how product liability lawyers are all about public safety

[jaylw314]

3 hours ago, GeeBee said:

I also note he departed RWY 18. In that direction, the terrain rises rapidly. Even with a fully functioning 172 you would need to fly the "Golf Course Departure." That is circle over the Edgewood golf course until you got enough altitude to turn north and head out over the lake.  I've had to roll off of 18 in a NA 210 and go to the golf course. With a bad plug, rolling off of 18 in that DA with a 172 he might as well stuck jelly in his pockets.

Wait, what?  I've never heard that saying before? 

3 hours ago, philiplane said:

Losing one out of eight plugs would not make any noticeable difference in performance. The second plug in each cylinder is for redundancy. You would see a slight rise in EGT on the affected cylinder, if the plug actually stopped firing. In most cases the engine will run fine after losing the center electrode tip, because the magneto produces sufficient energy to jump the larger gap. 

We don't have enough of an energy margin to ignore even a loss of 10-20 HP under conditions like that.  While the second ignition source is designed for redundancy, it's necessary for safety

[A64Pilot]

1 hour ago, jaylw314 said:

Wait, what?  I've never heard that saying before? 

We don't have enough of an energy margin to ignore even a loss of 10-20 HP under conditions like that.  While the second ignition source is designed for redundancy, it's necessary for safety

I disagree one plug I don’t think is noticeable, average GA pilot likely can’t and doesn’t fly with margins that tight, if they are, the loss of one plug isn’t the problem, stupid pilot is.

A whole mag may be 10 or 20% but one plug isn’t 

[A64Pilot]

3 hours ago, Shadrach said:

None of that matters to a 75hr plot departing with a DA of ~9000ft and a full rich mixture.   I wish there was ADS-B info available.  With 8500' of runway, one wonders if he just mushed along for 1.6 miles of runway before putting it in a field. 

Where do you get the full rich from?

[A64Pilot]

OK found the report, hell he had near zero compression on two cylinders, report said they staked the valves and got “thumb” compressions, I know from Model T motors that’s not more than 30 PSI or so.

Then the cylinders were rebuilt twice in how many hours?

This was his airplane, not a rental?

[DXB]

Remember this lawsuit?  Fatal J model crash due to water contamination in fuel per NTSB, with no evidence of mag failure.  The lawsuit against Lycoming claimed the flawed dual mag design caused the crash and ultimately led to a 6.3 million** jury verdict for the plaintiff.  The ability to file that suit somehow in City of Philadelphia was a factor I'm certain (perhaps the most plaintiff-friendly jury pool in the country within a relatively plaintiff-friendly legal landscape in Pennsylvania).  Hopefully Tempest has zero connection to Philadelphia, otherwise they'd be toast given the evidence of a missing center electrode for a single plug (despite all the other likely factors in this crash).  I see their corporate offices are in NC and this law firm is in FL.

 

**I just looked up result of Lycoming's appeal, which failed, leading to additional "delay" damages being awarded - now 9.1 million total as of last month.

[KB4]

7 hours ago, DXB said:

They do little to serve justice but are a major contributor to our operating costs.

What about safety?  No contribution to there?  Don’t get it twisted, manufacturers are in business for business not safety.  Only 1 professional will hold them accountable.  Im not a products liability guy but kudos to them for uncovering a defect with Tempest.
 

 

[DXB]

2 minutes ago, KB4 said:

What about safety?  No contribution to there?  Don’t get it twisted, manufacturers are in business for business not safety.  Only 1 professional will hold them accountable.  Im not a products liability guy but kudos to them for uncovering a defect with Tempest.
 

 

There are some cases where that is true. But in the end I suspect there will be zero contribution to safety or justice in this particular case - just a bunch of legal hyenas feeding on the opportunity created by a deceased pilot at the expense of everyone else.  

[philiplane]

2 hours ago, jaylw314 said:

 

We don't have enough of an energy margin to ignore even a loss of 10-20 HP under conditions like that.  While the second ignition source is designed for redundancy, it's necessary for safety

You don't lose 10-20 HP from the loss of one plug. If the engine is otherwise healthy, you lose very little power. If you have an engine monitor, you might notice a slight rise in EGT on the affected cylinder. But from the evidence, this engine wasn't otherwise healthy to begin with. 

[jaylw314]

23 minutes ago, philiplane said:

You don't lose 10-20 HP from the loss of one plug. If the engine is otherwise healthy, you lose very little power. If you have an engine monitor, you might notice a slight rise in EGT on the affected cylinder. But from the evidence, this engine wasn't otherwise healthy to begin with. 

True, I was thinking more in terms of losing a whole mag, which admittedly isn't what this is about...

[A64Pilot]

1 hour ago, KB4 said:

What about safety?  No contribution to there?  Don’t get it twisted, manufacturers are in business for business not safety.  Only 1 professional will hold them accountable.  Im not a products liability guy but kudos to them for uncovering a defect with Tempest.
 

 

Read the link I posted on the Firestone tire / Ford Explorer, the Lawyers were intentionally withholding info from the NTSB and not reporting the accidents as they thought it might hurt their case.

Seems if they had contacted the NHTSA, it’s possible they might have hurt their lawsuit but saved a couple of hundred lives? Maybe

‘I cut n pasted it

Lawyers and traffic safety researchers decided not to contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) because they lacked confidence in the agency and feared that an investigation might conclude that there were no defects thereby compromising existing personal injury lawsuits. All but 13 of the 271 fatalities from these tires took place after 1996.^[6]

 

 

[A64Pilot]

53 minutes ago, philiplane said:

You don't lose 10-20 HP from the loss of one plug. If the engine is otherwise healthy, you lose very little power. If you have an engine monitor, you might notice a slight rise in EGT on the affected cylinder. But from the evidence, this engine wasn't otherwise healthy to begin with. 

I’d bet lunch the plug is what we called “present but not contributing” in Military crash investigations, meaning yes it was a fault, but didn’t contribute to the crash.

It was likely firing from what I get from other failures here 

[Shadrach]

2 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Where do you get the full rich from?

Did you read the report? Did you see those plugs and the inside of those cylinders? It doesn’t look like the engine has ever been leaned.  20hrs SMOH and the cylinders are loaded up with so much carbon at the valve seats are fouled.

[A64Pilot]

7 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

Did you read the report? Did you see those plugs and the inside of those cylinders? It doesn’t look like the engine has ever been leaned.  20hrs SMOH and the cylinders are loaded up with so much carbon at the valve seats are fouled.

I did finally see it, but the report didn’t say he was taking off full rich, I believe it pointed to improper leaning in cruise, based on the excessive carbon build up.

However if I were a betting man, I’d bet he read so much on the internet about don’t lean on new cylinders , so that’s what he was doing, not leaning. What he got wrong of course was the part about breaking in at less than 5,000 ft

But you don’t build carbon at full power, plugs don’t foul at takeoff and climb, they foul in cruise and low power.  I bet he wasn’t leaning and flying at high altitude to avoid hitting the ground, and that’s where the carbon build up came from, not from taking off.

I’ve never seen carbon from full rich, very black soot of course, but the valve blocking carbon is from oil. As this was his second set of cylinders in a very short time, something else was going on, it may be he killed the first set from running slobbering rich too?

I’m not saying he didn’t lean to take off, he probably didn’t, but that’s not what I read in the report, what I read was probable cause was the pilots inadequate mixture leaning procedures which meant to me most likely cruise, but could well have meant too rich on take off and subsequent loss of power, it didn’t specify.

[Shadrach]

19 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

I did finally see it, but the report didn’t say he was taking off full rich, I believe it pointed to improper leaning in cruise, based on the excessive carbon build up.

However if I were a betting man, I’d bet he read so much on the internet about don’t lean on new cylinders , so that’s what he was doing, not leaning. What he got wrong of course was the part about breaking in at less than 5,000 ft

But you don’t build carbon at full power, plugs don’t foul at takeoff and climb, they foul in cruise and low power.  I bet he wasn’t leaning and flying at high altitude to avoid hitting the ground, and that’s where the carbon build up came from, not from taking off.

I’ve never seen carbon from full rich, very black soot of course, but the valve blocking carbon is from oil. As this was his second set of cylinders in a very short time, something else was going on, it may be he killed the first set from running slobbering rich too?

I’m not saying he didn’t lean to take off, he probably didn’t, but that’s not what I read in the report, what I read was probable cause was the pilots inadequate mixture leaning procedures which meant to me most likely cruise, but could well have meant too rich on take off and subsequent loss of power, it didn’t specify.

Unfortunately the NTSB made no mention of control position. No one will ever know what really happened.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, philiplane said:

The engine must make rated HP on only one magneto system, as part of the certification tests. The second system adds redundancy, and a minor rise in efficiency. Dual plugs move the torque curve sightly lower but have little effect on max HP available.

So he had 160 HP to start with, minus the 23 HP loss of a stock Cessna muffler. Leaving 103 HP or less at the prop when cylinder 4 went dead. 

 

With a fixed pitch propeller it’s never going to turn rated RPM and therefore never make rated 160HP

[A64Pilot]

49 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

With a fixed pitch propeller it’s never going to turn rated RPM and therefore never make rated 160HP

Usually if properly set up a fixed pitch airplane will hit redline at full throttle in level flight, if you have a climb prop it will easily go past redline in level flight.

A climb props objective is to climb of course so they will hit redline as low as Vx, a lot of STOL airplanes are set up that way. 

I assume he didn’t have a climb prop, but who knows

[GeeBee]

I recall this crash in a Stinson 108-3. Similar airframe and power (150hp). Similar power and wing loading. This crash occurs at similar DA (9000') and most of all, look at the mixture knob....full rich....... deja vu! Oh and all the plugs were firing.

 

[OR75]

11 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

So, given this scenario, is the accident a fault of training or lack thereof?

I stupidly took off on a single mag in a C-152 in Tx in above 100F heat, it took me a minute or two after takeoff to figure it out and maybe another minute while I thought about should I touch the mag switch or leave it alone, airplane could barely climb, but it flew with four dead plugs. I can’t image one plug even being detectable without an engine monitor and a scan by the pilot, much less being the cause of a crash. I’ve seen four cylinder engines completely lose compression in one cylinder, only running on three fly to an airport and make a safe landing.

This is a lawyer finding something to sue over, nothing more. They could care less about if it was the cause of the crash or not, they are looking for settlement money.

Remember some sports guy that flew a Cirrus into a building in New York with a CFI? Hartzell was sure in that case because their propellor “pulled” the aircraft into the building, can you imagine a more frivolous lawsuit?

This is what’s driving the cost of flying to be unaffordable

did they include the aluminum ore mining company and the contractor who makes the hartzell sticker ?!?!?!

[Yetti]

So to be sure when my plug electrode went a cylinder went with it and it was in and out.   Let's say DA was 5 or 6000.   And let's say I did go full mixture to get out in front of a in bound King Air.

Two weird things here the electrode was found.   So probably just departed. The plug might have still sparked if it was not covered in crap.   And as I always say the plugs tell a story.

I cannot put a picture up here, but the plug in question is in bad shape. 

Part of the reason we are given for paying high prices is traceability of parts.   If you are going to have traceability then that needs to be used when there is a problem with a batch.   The part number given in the report does not bring up a plug reference.   So I think it is the batch number.

To be sure Tempest did ask for the 4 fine wire plugs back and provided 8 massives for free.

  I always hope I have enough skill to stall it into the trees tail first.   So they are partly dead for several reasons.  Poor pilot technique in engine operation, deciding to take off High DA, was the engine even running well prior to taking off?, and not crashing well.   Had the engine operation been better he might have had one of two plugs running in that cylinder, but I would guess running rich had more than one plug fouled and maybe across several cylinders.    You would have thought the FAA lab would have checked all the plugs.   Or did I miss that part.

I pulled all my plugs and checked them, replaced with a spare I carry, did several run up and fast taxis .  Flew it home.  Several hours late.

[Yetti]

My deal with the grumpy IA is the plane only airworthy until it leaves his hangar.   Then it is on me.

[carusoam]

Additional data point…  from something completely different…

A rented C152 operating on one mag can only climb to about 2k’, on a day warm enough to play golf…

A pilot with less than 100hrs… may come to the conclusion that the 108hp O290, was designed to be able to handle it… because it has two ignition systems… they said something like that in aviation 101…

What that pilot didn’t consider was… what killed the mag, or is it leaking oil, will the plane fly all the way home on a Sunday…

Pulling the mixture any...  wasn’t considered…  no engine monitor was in the plane…

It was surely unknown how ROP this engine was operating… or what the FF actually was…

 

The level of engine management skills we get by being part of MS is amazing….

The level of engine management skills we have early on, using a rented C152… is quite risky…

 

All worked out well in the end…. It hastened this pilot to buy his own plane…

 

PP thoughts only… again, not related to the Tempest story above…

Best regards,

-a-

[A64Pilot]

It’s the lack of or rather the level of training that some get that never cease to amaze me.

How hard is to know that you lean above 5,000, even at full power?

Where was this guy based out of?

Oh, and I don’t think the plugs were a contributing cause in this accident, it was lack of compression on two cylinders in my opinion. Excess carbon had the valves stuck open.

I wouldn’t want to be the guy who overhauled those cylinders. They are after Tempest of course because they have deep pockets.

If this is like many cases if the Lawyers can’t get the big pockets, they will drop the case, it’s all about money

 

[A64Pilot]

We were shown this years ago at Ft Hood, the performance charts proved that hover at that altitude wasn’t possible. guess what the charts were right.

The Battalion Commander made the at the time controversial rule that no one would fly one of his aircraft without a computer generated copy of the performance numbers.

What was controversial was the computer generated part, many were put off by that, they wanted the old charts used to hand figure the numbers.

Slide forward a few years and the longbow has a dynamic page that constantly computes performance.

 

[Pinecone]

41 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

It’s the lack of or rather the level of training that some get that never cease to amaze me

Yeap.  

If the instructors don't know or remember, the student never learns.