CEN10CA376 · Wells Terry HULA GIRL
Wells Terry HULA GIRL · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2) to Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA376
- 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
- Accident
- 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
Wells Terry HULA GIRL
- Aircraft type
- Wells Terry HULA GIRL
- Category
- Glider
- 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
- N301TW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2), Wellington, COTo Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2), Wellington, CO
- 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
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who is also the designer and builder of the experimental motorglider, was making his second flight after having completed a number of high-speed taxi tests. The pilot said that several months earlier, on his first flight in the motorglider, shortly after becoming airborne the engine experienced a partial loss of power and he landed immediately. On the accident flight, immediately after takeoff, the pusher-configuration engine again lost power from 6,500 rpm to approximately 4,300 rpm. The pilot was not able to climb and was able to maintain flight at only 100 feet above ground level. Approximately one mile from the airport the pilot attempted an off-field emergency landing and then “did an intentional ground loop” to avoid a fence he had not noticed before touchdown. With the motorglider then moving sideways, the tail impacted a small tree. The carbon-fiber tail boom fractured and separated just forward of the vertical fin, causing substantial damage to the motorglider. The solo pilot was not injured. The pilot reported that there was adequate fuel in the tank and previous testing showed there was adequate fuel flow to the engine. After the accident the pilot reported that that his design of the engine cowling needed to be modified and he thought that “an engine compartment pressure differential from outside air caused the carburetor float bowl to empty.”
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to the inadequate design of the engine cowling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA376
- Event ID
- 20100708X81028
- Case number
- CEN10CA376
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 62018d007aaea158510e2250795099b10f8d7b6213b2230a3ea350ed0ca88ac5; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:39:59.146Z.