Hello everybody !

We had the first failure of a DL-50 here in our local club. There are 5 DL's around which all perform very well. All of them are bought here locally in Xi'an, China and are from the first generation with the thin mounting ears.

This particular one was running extremely well but suffered from an unexperienced pilot and thus saw some crashes and propstrikes.

The engine was on YAK54 and it seized while doing a low pass, not full throttle. Altitude was too low to land it and the result was a crash with quite some damage.

On the pictures you can see that the crankshaft was cracked at the place where the big-end is pressed in. The big end came out and started to rub the crankcase. It developed so much heat that the reed valve block started to melt !

It is now send to the factory and we will see what happens.

Roald