IAD03IA017 · Craig N. Moen RV-8
Craig N. Moen RV-8 · Incident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From 4W1 · Elizabethtown, NC to Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03IA017
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Craig N. Moen RV-8
- Aircraft type
- Craig N Moen RV-8
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N184CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4W1 · Elizabethtown, NCTo Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Ignition system › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in the traffic pattern, the engine backfired a few times. After landing, and while taxiing to the ramp, the pilot determined that the right ignition source was working intermittently. He was unable to replace the right ignition source and departed the following day. As the airplane made a normal descent into the final destination airport, the pilot discovered the right ignition source was "completely dead." The pilot had replaced both magnetos with a Dual Lightspeed Plasma II ignition system with Hall Effect Sensor Modules. After landing at the final destination airport, the pilot removed the back plate of the right Hall Effect sensor module and found that the timing rotor had fractured, and that the internal face of the back plate exhibited rotational scoring. Subsequent Safety Board examination revealed that the timing rotor had failed due to low-stress, high-cycle fatigue. According to the manufacturer, 400 timing rotors were in use, and there were no reported failures.
Probable cause
A low-stress, high-cycle fatigue fracture of the right ignition timing rotor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03IA017
- Event ID
- 20021203X05547
- Case number
- IAD03IA017
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3cdc4bce98f12f0a4c971c77f0609bcac5de3bb94c1fd038cd02b3c66ad9db13; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:01:17.134Z.