The Murphy Builders Site

I recently viewed a video on FB (The Aviator's Lounge) that appears to be a Rebel on Full Lotus floats. It makes a very hard landing on water, the engine dislodges and the plane flips. Anyone know the aircraft or of the incident? There is a guy commenting on the post and he definitely has a serious dislike of Murphy aircraft.

I saw that. Was a very hard landing.

I'm not finding "The Aviators Lounge" on FB. Is this the exact spelling?

I see 'The Aviation Lounge' and lots of sites under 'Aviator's Lounge' but no site called 'The Aviators Lounge'.

Rob

The Aviator's Lounge but you might have to put the ' in before the s. The poster is Richard Smith.

The hard landing is near the end of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC5yscm9dsI&t=24s

I saw that video too and it concerned me!!! Big engine installed with no mods done ?????

Very scary. It sure doesn’t seem like he hit hard enough to break the whole nose off the airplane. Definitely has a high sink rate though, and doesn’t appear to have any flaps deployed.

Probably not the first time it has hit that hard.

Only takes ONE of those 3000 FPM descents onto water to do that! Especially when you haven't double riveted your door post and / or added MAM's "float fix" doubler at the top between Fus-9 and the wing root panel.

It only takes the shearing of the first rivet to continue the shear process right to the bottom. Just like shearing a sheet of aluminum in the Browns and Boggs!

BTW, that is Rick Porteous' Rebel. Built in 1993..

I was actually watching that video expecting the low wing to stall and spin into the crowd, trying to fly as slow as the Rebel! Just a dumb.. dumb.. exhibition to start with. Surprised TC didn't violate both involved.

Wayne, I paused the video as the nose separates and it looks like it broke below the windshield. So, the “float fix doublers” didn’t come into play I guess. It basically unzipped at the door posts, right? I did a double row of rivets there. My question is: if there is a sheared rivet there will it be obvious with a visual inspection? I’ve never seen a sheared Avex, so not sure what to look for.
Thanks

I double rivet right from the bottom of the door post. I've also had a fair number of Rebel's in the shop and / or walked by at fly ins that didn't have the Z pattern of rivets from Fus-9 into the upper corner wrap. It all adds up, but not much is going to save a -3000FPM arrival to water!

I watched the video as well and was intrigued.
It's not the first time an engine has fallen off any given float plane on a water landing and there is at least one picture out there of another Rebel that lost its engine landing on water.
I had this conversation with an engineer friend if mine and he pointed me in the direction of load factors.
From the Murphy Rebel manual the load factors are +5.7/-3.8 at 1650 lbs. Who knows how much the airplane in question weighed during the accident so I had to make some assumptions.
It would follow that if -3.8 x 1650= -6270lbs of force was exceeded at touchdown that something bad would happen.
The long and the short of it was that after a bit of math it looks like less than 1800 fpm (6892 lbs force) would do the trick. Not as much as one might think but still excessive.
This leads me to believe there is not much point in worrying about engines falling off all the Rebels out there, however it does cause me to recall what my grandfather told me in a rare moment of sobriety " The earth is hard ".

Mike B.

Them would be positive Gs though