It is never pleasant to report a mishap.. fortunately not me, but unfortunately in our jointly owned Sling ZDL... Llewellyn on his first solo cross-country training flight to Pietermaritzburg as PIC.
From the pics it appears that there was a harder than normal touchdown on the nosewheel which collapsed, letting the plane grind to a halt on the propellers in the middle of runway 16. Eye-witness reports however was that there appeared to be nothing unusual about the landing which looked perfectly within all limits, but that the nosewheel had collapsed. Chatting to the insurance assessor, he is of the opinion that the high incidence of nose-wheel collapses on the Sling Aircraft, compared to other aircraft, indicates that the design of the wheel could be improved and that the margin for landing deviations from normal is too narrow. So perhaps this is something for The Airplane Factory to react on.
In the meantime, timing is very bad as we are due to leave on our Sling Africa Tour to Botswana and Vic Falls in 10 days and this is leaving little time for repairs. Andrew from The Airplane Factory has been marvellous in getting spares down to Pmb within a day or so and whilst the plane has been temporarily repaired it needs to get a special permit to fly it back to Johannesburg for full tolerances testing and clearance from the CAA to fly. It also means we have to fly to Bots with a temporary fixed propeller until we can get a new constant-speed hub and propellers ordered. Damn!!
 |
| Collapsed nosewheel of ZDL |
 |
| Oops, luckily didn't flip over and the props kept the fusilage off the deck. This also shows where the centre of gravity is and why it's important even when taxiing and after landing to hold the stick back to keep pressure off the nose-wheel. |
No comments:
Post a Comment