Pawnee Update

[Don Grillo]

Hello tow pilots, as you may already know, last weekend the towplane experienced a loss of power on takeoff roll (runway 09) and had to do a high-speed abort. The glider was airborne and landed behind the towplane but ended up off the right side of the runway in the corn field. No damage.
Prior to that we had been experiencing some rough spots in the RPM range from 2100 to 2300 and noticed black smoke coming out when throttling back to start the cooling process prior to release.

This past week I flew the Pawnee back to poplar grove Airmotive and they replaced the carburetor, balanced the prop and made some adjustments. So far the results seem to have paid off. We did three tows yesterday and the engine is running very smooth, no rough spots and we are getting 40 more RPM on takeoff power. You should see 2390 rpm at full power.  No smoke was observed when reducing power prior to release and the engine ran smooth in all rpm ranges.

the procedure of reducing power 100-125 rpm prior to release to start the cooling process will be evaluated for its effectiveness.

we have about another 15 hours of using the breakin oil after which we will go back to using the standard oil.

let me know if you are getting radio static when the engine is running at full power. We may have a bad ground that will require fixing.

fly safe,

Don

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