The write up was in the Squadron III free email newletter the Beagle puts out. Excerpts and minor editing below:
Excerpt...
...He was forced into an emergency landing at a small airport in Osceola, 70 miles north of Springfield. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.
...believes the engine's air intake became blocked, causing the engine to quickly overheat and misfire. The problem was not related to biofuel because he had not used biofuel since leaving Kitty Hawk. Instead, he was using standard airplane fuel.
He chose not to attempt to land on Highway 13 because of traffic. The grass runway was obscured by a bank of trees. So he landed on the paved taxiway, in gusting winds, and quickly had to turn onto a grassy field to avoid a building. His plane slid, rode up a berm, lifted over a road and finally stopped, upside down, in a drainage ditch 25 feet from a home.
His comment follows:
“Accidental deployment of speed brake during moderate turbulence... front end of tornado warning which was not in effect upon take-off. Everything works except right leg... can feel but not move. “
Beagle preaching – I’ve been cautioning people against electric speed brake as I saw Klaus abort a takeoff when his cb blew and the belly board was stuck down. I don’t think a less observant pilot would see the circuit breaker out after putting the speed brake up for takeoff – and it makes me nervous. If you could work in a 5 minute timer on extending it, maybe then I’d feel better…
However, Len confirms he was shocked to find the belly board down when he was landing after cooking his engine – blames thick gloves in cold front for making the switch mistake. The manual speed brake solves all this by popping up at 100 mph or so and also stands up in the cockpit before takeoff – in the way of the throttle. Sure Rutan discovered various things that needed to be done to protect the pilot’s back in the Long EZ.
End Excerpt
For the question on the switch----you can use any kind of switch that you want. For my aircraft, the original builder located the switch next to the pitch trim where it could be easily bumped. It was a 3 position switch with the middle position being off. The speedbrake indicator was right next to the switch. If you like to mess around with partial speedbrake positions, a locking lever is not a good idea. With a manual system, you only have up or down----and I tend to like the all up or down. The current switch position is on my Infinity stick. It is momentary down, off in the middle, and clicks up for up. The indicator is on my Dynon engine monitor which is on the passenger side of the aircraft (not ideal). However, I only use the brake for landing----and very difficult to make the same mistake with the switch on the stick----as well as me being spring loaded to check speed brake position with any heating problems.
And of course, downdraft cooling or manual speedbrake (properly adjusted) totally fixes this problem. All I have done is to mitigate it---which is ok. The point is---it bit me---I got lucky (maybe a little skill---but don't want to kid myself too much). It recently bit the BIO fuel Cozy driver----and he was not so lucky. The thread was resurected to scare the crap out of people to make sure this is in their scan. Something so simple can majorly ruin your day or worse yet, kill you. Leaving the brake down WILL bring you out of the sky. There was at least one instance where there was a speedbrake failure airborne (stuck down). He put his brake partially down to quickly get through a layer (or maybe to keep his engine a little warm during a cold descent) but then could not retract. Because of that incident, I only deploy when I am ready to land.
