Air Race power settings

[TythePilot]

Greetings,
I am writing a paper for my propulsion investigation class and I am doing a case study on the Kevin Eldredge/Relentless prop failure incident of Reno 2010 seen here:

http://www.eaa.org/news/2010/2010-09-15_relentless.asp

I have been able to scrounge most of the information I need but I would really like to find what kind of power settings were being run, and also the exact engine model being run (i.e. IO-720-D1B). The Relentless Air Racing webiste is gone and instead is trying to sell me laser snoring treatments... I just cant seem to verify if he had the 540 or the 720 on board at the time. Some old blog posts show the 720 being tested in the spring of 2010. Any info would be greatly appreciated, especially from citable sources.

Ty Sib

[Todd copeland]

I believe at that time he had a twin turbo io580 lycoming. The engine was really designed to run in the NXT. I was always confused by his decision to move away from that engine in the NXT after that but I guess loosing your prop in flight could do that. I'm really not sure of the manifold pressure but he was probably running a water/alcohol anti detonation mixture to run the pressure way up. Keep digging. If you find out, let us know here. I am pretty sure jeff Lavelle is running a similar set up in his super fast Glasair III.

[jrs14855]

I saw the engine at Reno just after the incident. It was definitely a six cylinder. What I heard just after the incident was that an oil fitting failed interrupting the oil supply from the governor. That started the chain of events that caused the prop blades to separate.

[Tronfire]

It's a possibility that there was frame stress which might have cause some components to fail, like the ailerons and rudder. Either or, I doubt that it was the engine's fault.

[Todd copeland]

It's a possibility that there was frame stress which might have cause some components to fail, like the ailerons and rudder. Either or, I doubt that it was the engine's fault.

Im sorry.....the engine prop hub fails and you blame the airframe?! It was definitely and engine problem.

[TythePilot]

It's a possibility that there was frame stress which might have cause some components to fail, like the ailerons and rudder. Either or, I doubt that it was the engine's fault.

Yeah, it was definitely an engine issue, and the previous poster was right about the oil fitting, EAA even posted a great article about it http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/arti...e_fittings.asp

You may be thinking of Leewards crash....?

[Sport Class Prez]

Kevin gave me permission to give you his e-mail. Kevin@myairport.com. Contact him for more specifics, but here is the synopsis:

He was running a town turbo Lycoming 540/580. He lost oil out of a broken fitting which made the prop governor ineffective to hold the pitch of the prop. Kevin's prop was not counterweighted as are some of our props (and most aerobatic props). This means that without oil pressure, it failed to the flat pitch stop. This caused a tremendous over-rev of the engine (reportedly as high as 10,000) and the loss of one of the prop blades. The resulting prop imbalance broke the spacer that had been installed between the prop flange and the crankshaft flange. That allowed the propeller to depart the airplane without taking the engine with it. Kevin did a picture perfect dead-stick landing exactly like we try to train for at PRS.

[Sport Class Prez]

should say "twin" turbo.