Remember the movie "It could happen to you"?
Unfortunately I didn't win the lotto, but I was just as lucky.
A friend of ours visited from the the Cape, and Mak suggested we had a nice sunset flip on Friday before we catch up over a few beers. So gesĂȘ, so gedaan. We met up at Kitty Hawk, me flying from Rhino park. The Capetonian then went with me, and another pilot friend of ours - fixed wing and chopper - went with Mak.
As we were a bit heavy, I was quite weary about performance out of Kitty Hawk, but everything was perfect. 5760 on the tach, and 39 inches boost. Turning downwind towards Bronkies I came off the power (boost) and climbed steadily at about 5300 rpm/30 inches. Just passed Zynkraal and all the power lines in the region, I came off the power, to do what I love most about gyros, go low level. Settling at about 150 feet AGL, at 5100 rpm we were flying, chatting disussing gyro flying etc. I noticed the engine rpm dropped to about 4900 rpm and we were losing altitude. I therefore wanted to increase the rpm to about 5200, my usual engine rpm where the Sycamore is happy when loaded.
Thats where it all went pearshaped. When I nipped the throttle, instead of increasing the rpm, it dropped to idle. First reaction. This cannot happen to me.

Closed the throttle, and opened again. Nothing.

As I was very low, times were few. Selected a field - VERY FORTUNATELY, just to my left was a perfect field, made a quick radio call to Mak to inform him of the situation, and landed. This most propably all happenned in about, dunno, maybe 30 seconds, which felt like 3.
Everything went perfect, including the landing

- for an engine out, that is - therefore me and CFW will soon be wandering the skies again, all a bit wiser.
With the help of my friends we recovered CFW that evening over a few beers, and then celebrated life over a few further beers at Kitty Hawk.
I took CFW yesterday to Glen Meyer at Springs and opened up the Rattex for a quick evaluation. The - quite baffling - findings I will post on technical talk, for maybe some insight from others that do not come here.
All in all, thanx to those who do not rest

....... and friends who will do, almost, anything for a few beers.

- You can push buddy, we're going nowhere

- Sun setting on us