I thought I would share this experiance with the readers.

Did you ever wonder what would happen if a blob of Algae was to find its way into your UAT?
My friend ran into a frustrating set of circumstances last week when flying his Elan, he would start his Turbine and proceed to take off…. No problem, then as the flight progressed (around two minutes) he noticed that his output power from the Turbine would slowly degrade until the point in which he would be forced to land as it would not sustain flight.
Well of course the first thing to do is to blame the Turbine/Electronics…Right???
So he changed the ECU battery thinking this may be the cause… he started the Turbine and took it up to full power on the ground…no problem, he proceeded to take off and after about two minutes into the flight he had to do a landing due to loss of power.
What else could it be other than a faulty fuel pump, so off to home to change the pump.
The next day with the new pump installed he proceeded to start up the Turbine at home, well being in a residential neighborhood and wanting to be a good neighbor he didn’t want to run the turbine at full power for more than 30 seconds, the full power test looked good so off to the schedule jet event for the weekend for some fun and relaxation.
He gets to the event and proceeds to fly…after two minutes he has to land again for lack of power… what the #$@% is going on here!!!!!
Well ….let’s do some more ground tests, let’s eliminate the fuel solenoid in case it has some sort of restriction. Start the Turbine and let her rip on the ground….RPM dropping, PW increasing…
OK …. Let’s eliminate the fuel tank and UAT and connect the taxi tank directly to the pump….Start it up and hold full throttle….it runs great and the pump PW is way down.
Let’s look at the UAT…hey what’s that green blob in the bottom of the UAT?????
Unscrew the lid and dump the contents into a clean paper towel….. YIKES, its like a slimy wad of crap!
Moral of the story, if you have fuel stored for a long period be on the lookout for Algae growth…
The reason it took approximately two minutes for the power to diminish is the fuel draw would pull the slime wad around the UAT bag until it created a large restriction, when you shut off the turbine the slim wad would fall back to the bottom of the UAT so the next time you started it it would run normally on the ground for a short period of time.