> Just a note to tell you about a flight that i made today in my KR that
> can remind all of us about what can happen if you don,t take ALL of
> the weather factors into concideration when you go flying. As a side
> note i probably have one of the last krs that still have the retracts.
> For those of you that made the gathering this year my KR was the one with
> the full clamshell gear doors. This is all relevent to the story. Flying
> a KR in the north in the winter means that you usually don,t have that
> many days that you can fly without freezing to death so you take everyday
> that you can get and today was such a day. The temp was in the mid 20,s
> with bright sun and not too much of a cross wind at the field where i
> base my plane. We had just had a large snow storm 2 days before but thr
> runway ws plowed with mostly bare pavement showing. As i taxied my plane
> to the active i passed over a lot of snow patches and damp spots on the
> black pavement. Takeoff was normal and. i headed for a local airport
> about 20 miles away. Ther was a lot of traffic at the field so i
> extended my upwind leg a ways to allow for spacing. After entering
> downwind i reached to lower the landing gear only to find that it was
> frozen solid in the up position. Pucker factor riseing rapidly at this
> point. After several min,s of trying i was begining to think that the
> only option was that i was giong to have to land on the ski runway on the
> belly. I tried one last dive with a sharp pullout while pulling to lower
> the gear at the same time when it finally broke loose. I proceeded to
> land and when i got out to look the wheel wells were full of ice from the
> snow and water that had splashed into them. I flew home with the gear
> extended with no further problems. Now i will have to get my plane into a
> heated hanger to melt all of the ice before i go flying again. This
> turned out to have a happy ending but it could have gone the other way
> with a plane that needed a lot of repairs. I have been flying this plane
> for 18 years and this is the first time that this has happened. It has
> given me a new preflight and taxi item to check. Maybe this will help
> someone else from having a similar problem. Kip
