Moster's death

Yesterday was not the luckiest day of my paramotoring life. The beginning was pretty good but the end disappointed me.

My Moster died in the afternoon.

Here is a short story:

After work I came to the field with fresh petrol mixed with Motul 800 - as always.

I wanted to prepare myself to the competitions and adjust the speed system. After take off I realised that the speed system line is a bit too short and I have to extend it.

The air was a bit bumpy. The wind gradient was not constant and the thermals were bubbling. I did not take much risk and after about 30 minutes I decided to set up the final approach and land.



My peace of mind was disturbed about 20 meters above the ground, the engine stopped and the gliding final let begun.

After an emergency landing I did a careful check of the engine.

What has happened? How did this happen? Why did this happen? And the most important one - why did this happen to me?

The first thought was - I seized the engine. Quick glance at the plug - it is black!

At the same time my friend noticed that the connecting rod punched a hole in the engine

I disassembled the engine to see how the piston looks like. The cylinder looks fine, the bearings are fine... the cause of the emergency landing was the broken connection rod

 

With Roman Kapler's help ( Motoroma ) I was able to investigate the cause. 

The reason was that the manufacturer used slightly too small bearing (19,6mm) and in the extreme position of the connecting rod small offset appeared.

It would be good enough to use a 22mm bearing and this would not happen. 30h airtime ago when I was replacing worn parts everything worked fine. 

Next time you will disassemble your paramotor to service pay attention to this detail. 

As far as I know it is not the first instance of this kind of failure.

Fly safely and check your engines!

This article is a translation of Lipton's article published on Leszek's blog