RE: KMP PITTS 12
Guys, I have Bad news.... Sunday afternoon I fired up the engine. Started right up, allowed it to warm up, conducted a good distance range check and proceeded to the side of my house for initial take off. Had my son with me and I centered up the plane and initiated a smooth throttle increase the plane lifted off nicely and began climb out. I imidiately noticed it a bit nose heavy so I made a few clicks of backpressure to compensate. Made a left turn and was heading on a down wind line towards me to get a look at this baby. Made a right turn and pull back to gain altitude. Suddenly wam-wam as if I was hit by a stray signal. The plane did a violent jerk/roll side to side. I tried to continue on and up line to gain more altitude to see if I could settle the problem and it repeated the violent uncontrolable jerk. I had plenty of power and airspeed. I reduce power to see if I could get it to glide in and the interfearance continued. I had to watch this thing plummit into the ground about 200 ft out from my position. I was able to slow the descent a bit before impact and amazingly as it appearded the plane was completely intact lying upsidedown on the top wing. While we walked to the crash site, it was aparent that the entire nose section had seperated uponimpact and the top wing suffered a bit of damage. the entire airframe and tail section is completely un-scaffed.
I was pissed to say the least but gathered my plane with my son walked back to the shop. Disconnected the throttle linkage, and fuel lines. set the front section with undamaged motor. on the bench, put the plane on the rack and proceeded to go work on my FW 190.
I have not looked inside, conducted any investigation, or even tried to find out what happened yet. It pissed me off!!!
So, I will at some time find out what caused the problem. But not yet ready to dig into it.
I will say this...For the 10 seconds of flight I felt it was going to be one Bad-***** plane. Lift off was sweet with no bad ground habbits.
I will post pics of the damage soon.