Fellow Canardists
I am a bit late getting this to you and apologize for that.....On September 30th, at 1851hrs, Varieze N5WZ canopy catastropically opened and then finally blew off during a canard flight at Arlington (AWO) Washington. I was not flying, had not filed a flight plan, and had no intention to fly. Questions by the NTSB and FAA were somewhat grilling, but manageable. My hats off to them, and I thank them every day, for their understanding. Being in Wings program didn't hurt either. A NASA report was filed. Because there were no injuries, no property damage, and no damage to AWO, the only real story is that N5WZ did burn up. My fire extinguisher was in my hangar. I didn't bring it since I was only doing some canard flying. A fellow aviator brought over a fire extinguisher and it failed to work. At this time the fire was only on the engine and was pretty much a non-event. By the time the fire department arrived, the fire was in the engine bay only and the header tank cap had popped off. The fire department put high pressure water on the aircraft to douse the flames. It did not stop the fire. I believe foam instead of water would've put out the fire and saved pretty much all of N5WZ except the engine compartment but the firemen did their best. For those of you wondering what happened when the fire got to the 100LL in header tank and the strakes, nothing happened. No explosions, no loud noises - just a methodically moving fire.
The O-200 Continental engine was at TBO 0 (yep, ZERO). It would've been out on it's engine break-in flight probably that weekend. The canopy safety latch that I had on my work bench and had purchased from Brock before the big sale to Aircraft Spruce was not installed. Also, the fire extinguisher should've been there. Hindsight is a great thing - especially since I am still around to use it.
Lessons learned.......my next EZ will have the latch installed. I happen to have a new one in it's Brock package still sitting on my work bench. The fire extinguisher will be there as well. Many in the local Canard community helped me dispose of all the burned carnage. I still have the engine and many aircraft parts and hardware - some only for Varieze's. I don't know what I'm going to do with all of these. I haven't started my "what is salvabeable and what is not" phase.
I do have N5WZ pictured on our EZ.org site. I don't know if I'm going to remove it or put a note under it as to it being destroyed.
Jim "Too Tall" Hall
