Safeair Pitot Mast Failure!!

On takeoff in the RV-10 the other day, I had a very fast airspeed fluctuation on rotation. It only did it once and only for a moment. IIRC, the AS indication went down then back up and stabilized. After the flight, I decided to wash the plane. When I grabbed the pitot mast to wash it, it fell from the bottom of the wing hanging by the wires and pitot/AOA tubing. I have Dynon Pitot and Safeair pitot mast. You can imagine what damage this could have cased to the bottom of the wing if it fell during flight! I did some research and found on Safeair's website that they have had a couple of failures just like mine reported. The mast to the mounting flange weld cracks and fails. As a result, they have a new and improved pitot mast available so check to make sure you have the newer version. http://safeair1.com/averytools/pitotmast.php
Failed pitot mast weld

They mailed me a service advisory several years back, dated Dec. 9, 2011 concerning that very problem with the GOLD Anodized Aluminum masts (their caps). If you ordered the mast directly from them you should have gotten that letter.

dlloyd3 said:

They mailed me a service advisory several years back, dated Dec. 9, 2011 concerning that very problem with the GOLD Anodized Aluminum masts (their caps). If you ordered the mast directly from them you should have gotten that letter.

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Never got a letter from Safeair/Avery, and I think Avery is their sole distributor for the mast? Any way,,,I talked to Avery this morning and they are sending out a replacement today. They have wonderful customer service!

+1 on the cracks! Found it after they sent the bulletin a couple years ago.

Mine was a bear to get out too since I had run wiring conduit over the pilot flang

Had to cut it out, drill out the rivets and then add a doubler.

Its always the easy jobs that are so hard

I did not get any notification.

No notification here....

I got a letter sometime several years ago. replaced the gold one with a blue one.

Never aware of this. Thx for posting. Gold mast still installed.

I only bought and installed the SafeAir mast a year ago. In the box with the "blue" mast was some documentation and it included the description of the potential issue with the welds on the older design.

Pitot mast

I had a gold one fail last year. I just re welded it. No letter ever recieve by me either.

No letter. Mast broke after paint. Very expensive to repair. Thumbs down.

Found my original cracked just before Osh. after reading this thread. It did not appear life threatening so I shot off an email to Tony at SafeAir1 on Friday and after arriving at Osh on Saturday I had a reply from Tony asking for my address, no other questions asked.

When I arrived back at home on Thursday I had a box with the new improved version of the mast laying on my counter.

Thanks Tony for such good customer service! I bought the original over 6 years ago!

The new version looks to be using a much better intersection with a nice wide fillet weld. I doubt this one will give any issues long term.