Guys,
I'm back from the airport again, I met with the manager and the
site contractor. But first let it be known that I accept full
responsibility for me and my plane. I am not going to act stupid, I am
more aware of the conditions of the runway and the hazards of the work
going on there than anyone. Supervising work such as this and more is
what I do.
We walked the run way and can see that the events are pretty much
as I had stated. There is one short white mark several feet before the
patch and I think that the tail hit there and the strut dug in several
feet past the patch. The strut dug in after the main pivot bolt broke and
dropped the nose wheel off. I didn't check for damage under the plane to
see if the nose wheel hit anywhere else. The prop did not strike until
several feet after that. I could tell that it was at idle as the tick
marks from the prop were about 6 inches apart directly on the drag mark
of the nose strut. It ran a lot longer than I thought as the prop strikes
continued for a good 50 yards as the prop got smaller and smaller.
Funny thing is it all occurred as I had once imagined that it
might happen when I was working on the nose wheel and realized that
there was a single point familiar possible.
Any way thanks , but no lawyers or claims. The contractor may or
may not offer me something and I may or may not accept that either. There
is a lot more than usual involved here. We do millions of dollars of work
with this outfit (They are one of the best there is). The foreman is a
personal friend and the contractor has a pretty tough outlook on foreman
that are held accountable for mistakes on a job. I won't put him through
that either and he is already upset enough, more than me. Actually it was
probably best all the way around that this happened to me and not some
other plane. I'm willing to bet that the final repairs will be done by
the middle of next week on the runway. I told them all that I would have
much rather donated a $1000 towards resurfacing of the runway which is
truly needed and not in the scope of work at this time. Any way how many
of you guys can say that a contractor would ask you when you wanted go
flying so they didn't have the runway closed for ya. It is nice to have
friends.
Thank you all for the best wishes and I won't be down for long and start
boring you with don't you wish you were there stories. Which BTW I had
put close to 30 hours on her in the past month.
One last thought -- hmmmm I did install the tail wheel blocking
when I built her????
Joe Horton
Coopersburg, Pa.
joe.kr2s.buil...@juno.com
