Did I miss something here ? Why are we blaming the saito for a crash ? Was it an obvious flaw in the motor or was it the ground crew ?

I've only had one engine failure that was NOT my own fault, that was an OS52 that blew a huge hole in the center of it's piston on take-off. It was a part defect and was replaced no questions.

My other engine outs have been related to something I was responsible for like a tank clunk getting stuck. I had an interesting problem with a Zenoah 45. I installed a carb ram stack, which does improve the mid range performance. The engine out came when you cut the power to idle (H9 cessna) dropped flaps and did a 45 degree decent. The best I can figure is that stack rams too much air into the motor which is at low rpm causing a flame/lean out. My P-40 has a Sachs 4.2, the carb is at the same angle as the G45, it too had a ram stack. On the down side of a loop I would throttle her back, as I transitioned back to level flight, there would be a scary delay in engine response as I advanced the throttle. I then put two and two together and realised the stack was the problem. That stack is fine at higher speeds, but low rpm and high airspeed doesn't mix. I'm thankful the P-40 never went dead as I would really doubt I'd make it back to the field. I have since removed those stacks and no more problems. In fact the P-40 picked up RPM. I guess the point is, the problem was self-inflicted.

I am not much of a fan of the Saito, they do have more power than OS per size but I think due to the timing and porting used to obtain more power they can be a little touchier to tune. They tend to like higher nitro further increaseing the tuning touchies. Their idle quality suffers from this too. Don't get me wrong, my Saito 100 runs fine, my OS120 is just a tick nicer.

Sorry to hear about the loss.

S1