I've never written one of these so I'll just jump into it. I'm working on my commercial, and I haven't been happy with my landings lately, so decided to stay in pattern and just do laps for an hour or two. On preflight, I find nothing wrong, but I do notice the smell of fuel in the cockpit. I found the fuel sump upside down behind one of the seats, so I figured some one else just wasn't careful and some fuel spilled inside. It wasn't strong, but it was there.

On runup, everything is a-okay, and I do a few laps. The plane was actually performing really well, and everything seemed fine. On my fifth take off though, after reaching Vx and already airborne, I suddenly feel the engine give. I glanced down at the engine instruments and saw my RPMs fall to the 2000s and dropping. The fuel pressure gauge was also flashing red and was practically 0. It kind of felt like slow motion when I realized 'Oh shit, engine failure?'

I looked out and figured from my sight picture I had enough remaining runway to land again. I cut the remaining power and settled her down before pressing hard on the brakes. The entire time I'm trying to make the radio call that I'm aborting my takeoff, but it just sounds like confused gibberish. Learned a lesson there about flying first, communicating second. As soon as I'm off the runway the engine is just fine with everything in the green and I taxi back.

The mechanics got into it right away and found that a fuel valve was broken. That fuel smell I noticed earlier was from fuel leaking out of it. I just kind of laughed the experience off but once the adrenaline kind of wore off I felt mad at myself. Like what would of happened if I took a few more seconds before making my decision to abort? The airport is surrounded by trees, so what would I have done if the failure happened when I was clear of the runway? Would I have tried the 'impossible turn'? I know the outcome was ideal but its hard not to think about. It definitely makes me question my skills, but I'll be back at it again next week.

Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings!