It was not my smartest day. I had found in the first few flights that my carburetor heat was not working very well. Since we were getting into the colder part of the year, I was concerned that I might have a problem with carburetor ice, so I added a bunch of stainless steel wool into my exhaust heat muffs to increase the surface area and the heat transfer from the exhaust. I thought I had the steel wool secure. I had flown the plane several times after adding the material and checked it after each flight. It never moved.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Charles Stites asked me to go up for a photo shoot for an upcoming article he wanted to write for Private Pilot magazine about my airplane. The morning dawned clear and cold - about 27° F, not exactly great weather for flying an open cockpit airplane. It was a little more difficult than usual getting the engine started but once running, it seemed to do fine.

I took off and headed out over Jordan Lake, with Charles following as photographer in John Bane’s Husky. John and Charles were as cold as I was, since they were flying with the Husky’s door open.

We made several circuits of the lake, with Charles shooting pictures from several angles. I noticed the engine losing power and suspected I was picking up some carburetor ice, so I pulled the carb heat on “full” and left it on. We made one more photo run and then John and Charles closed their door and headed back to Cox. I turned more towards Highway 64, which crosses Jordan Lake on a long causeway, and headed back that way because a straight line back to Cox would be over pure forest, and would be fairly close to the Class C airspace over RDU. Since I didn’t have a GPS on board, I elected to follow the highway back for ease of navigation. Good thing I did.

Just as I reached the shoreline of the lake, the engine suddenly lost power. It would only produce about 1200 RPM, which was not enough to keep it in the air. I immediately slowed to my best glide speed (50 mph). I tried turning the carb heat “off” since it was already on full, but that had no effect. I noted on the Vertical Speed Indicator that I was losing about 400 feet per minute. Since I was only 1200 feet above the ground, that meant I would be able to keep it in the air for 3 more minutes. I was about 8 miles from Cox, so there was no chance to get back, but I might be able to make it to Deck Field, which was only about 4 miles from my present position.

I called John on the radio and told him I had engine trouble and was going down. He was already almost back to Cox and turned around to come help if he could. He asked if I could make it to Cox and I told him no, but I was trying to make Deck Field.

As I approached Deck, I came over US highway 64, a 4 lane divided highway - the first time since the engine failure that I was over anything but dense forest. I was now only about 200’ high and still over a mile from Deck so I decided to land on the highway. Traffic was fairly light, and the wind was right down the road, so I set up to land with the traffic on the eastbound lane. As I got close I realized that there was a pickup truck directly beneath me, so I pulled the nose up to let him get ahead of me. At that time the engine quit altogether and I had to put the nose down to keep from stalling. I flew the plane onto the road, hitting pretty hard. It bounced, I recovered and flared it into a nice landing, right behind the pickup (which thankfully did not see me and kept on going)

I was congratulating myself on having survived the landing as I was still rolling down the center of the eastbound lane at perhaps 30 mph when the right wing dipped and the plane began to veer off to the right. I applied full left aileron and full left rudder but couldn’t stop it from leaving the road and hitting the ditch where it ground looped. I was unhurt and was climbing out of the cockpit when John called and asked if I was OK. I told him I was, but I had torn up the airplane.

It turns out the steel wool in the heat muffs got sucked into the carburetor and choked the engine.
The ground loop was caused by the axle breaking (due to the forceful impact with the ground as
I avoided stalling the wing, missing the pickup truck).

I was unhurt, and nobody on the ground was hurt, but the plane received a bit of damage. In addition to the broken axle, the right wingtip and aileron were damaged, the horizontal stabilizer was broken and the tailwheel was torn off. It took 8 months of work to get the plane ready to fly again.