Cotter Pins
Those words "Cotter Pins" remind me of an incident I had with my RV8A a few years ago.
I had flown my 8A up to Minnesota to look at an RV8 kit for sale, and was on my way back home in East Tennessee. Enroute I had a fuel stop in Paducah, KY, and as I lined up on the runway and sofly touched down, I mentally congratulated myself for a "greaser."
As I rolled out, I touched left rudder to correct a slight drift to the right of centerline, and, to my surprise, NOTHING happened! Again I pushed left rudder, and again nothing happened as I drifted towards the right edge of the runway.
Seeing that I was going to depart the runway, I pulled idle cutoff and rolled into some high grass near the end of the runway. After the plane stopped and my pulse again came back close to normal, it suddenly dawned on me what had happened - a cotter pin that I failed to bend over had fallen out, leaving me without control of the left rudder and brake.
During construction of the brake/rudder pedal assembly, I just stuck the cotter pins in place because they would be going in and coming out numerous times before the assembly was finished. When I was finished with
the assembly, I bent all the cotters down - except one. And that one cotter
pin took around two hundred hours to finally slide out.
I ended up buying the RV8 kit but I was extremely careful to ensure I properly secured the cotter pins.
Walt Shipley
Chuckey, TN
P.S. I finished the RV8 and it now resides in Australia