7DeltaLima
Well Known Member
I was playing taxi service last week by flying down to KSAV (Savannah, GA) to pick up my son in order for him to be home mid-week to coach my grandson's baseball game. (I know, first world problem...) I made a nice landing runway 19 at KSAV and taxied over to SheltAir to pick up my son. There was a Delta flight holding short for me to land so I didn't dawdle on the runway but also wasn't a high speed taxi either. I felt a few bumps but attributed it to the commercial jets coming and going, fast braking, etc that had the runway less than smooth. In fact, rwy 19 had been notamed out of service earlier in the day as they were doing some maintenance on the runway.
After exiting the runway and the first Delta jet departed, I heard ground trying to find an airport service truck to go out to the runway to pickup a cone on 19??? I hadn't seen a cone but didn't impact me so just continued on to Sheltair. When I parked at SheltAir, the line guys immediately started asking about the nose wheel pant.... what happened, when it happened, sharing that a local Cirrus had the same problem, etc. I had no clue what they were talking about until I got everything shut down and stepped out to have a look. This is what I saw....
It turns out the "the cone" that was in the middle of the runway had the same paint scheme as my plane.
I've never seen a wheel pant peel off like this one. Glad it did as there is no apparent speed loss nor directional control issues at all.
(btw -- the folks at SheltAir were great. No fees for stopping and going (maybe a $15 RON) and didn't attempt to sell fuel. Line guys volunteered to try to chase down the airport crew to get my "cone" back. They actually came running up to the plane with the cone as we were getting ready to leave.)
I went back to KSAV the next morning to drop my son off so he could go back to work. RWY 19 was again notamed out of service and they had service trucks on the runway doing repairs. I have no idea if I picked up a loose tool on the runway the previous day or what...
Yesterday, I flew over to KMSL to visit my brother and the manager who I know well came up and asked me about my new "speed mod ) He told me all the RVer's were always looking for new mod's but this was the first time he'd seen this one.
Moral of the story -- Stuff happens.....Paint your wheel pants one solid color not the 4 color PIA that I did. The new one will likely be one color. I think I read here sometime ago where Paul Dye said to paint them a Rustolem color so they'd be easy to match. I noticed on the beautiful RV14 that was posted here yesterday, solid color wheel pants. Guess this isn't their first rodeo.
After exiting the runway and the first Delta jet departed, I heard ground trying to find an airport service truck to go out to the runway to pickup a cone on 19??? I hadn't seen a cone but didn't impact me so just continued on to Sheltair. When I parked at SheltAir, the line guys immediately started asking about the nose wheel pant.... what happened, when it happened, sharing that a local Cirrus had the same problem, etc. I had no clue what they were talking about until I got everything shut down and stepped out to have a look. This is what I saw....
It turns out the "the cone" that was in the middle of the runway had the same paint scheme as my plane.
I've never seen a wheel pant peel off like this one. Glad it did as there is no apparent speed loss nor directional control issues at all.
(btw -- the folks at SheltAir were great. No fees for stopping and going (maybe a $15 RON) and didn't attempt to sell fuel. Line guys volunteered to try to chase down the airport crew to get my "cone" back. They actually came running up to the plane with the cone as we were getting ready to leave.)
I went back to KSAV the next morning to drop my son off so he could go back to work. RWY 19 was again notamed out of service and they had service trucks on the runway doing repairs. I have no idea if I picked up a loose tool on the runway the previous day or what...
Yesterday, I flew over to KMSL to visit my brother and the manager who I know well came up and asked me about my new "speed mod ) He told me all the RVer's were always looking for new mod's but this was the first time he'd seen this one.
Moral of the story -- Stuff happens.....Paint your wheel pants one solid color not the 4 color PIA that I did. The new one will likely be one color. I think I read here sometime ago where Paul Dye said to paint them a Rustolem color so they'd be easy to match. I noticed on the beautiful RV14 that was posted here yesterday, solid color wheel pants. Guess this isn't their first rodeo.
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