that nose wheel should only be used on hard surfaces. if you land on soft fields get the upgrade. Van's should really make that a service bulletin.
that nose wheel should only be used on hard surfaces. if you land on soft fields get the upgrade. Van's should really make that a service bulletin.
that nose wheel should only be used on hard surfaces. if you land on soft fields get the upgrade. Van's should really make that a service bulletin.
And you base this on ... what exactly? The available data surrounding this incident don't support it, so it must be your own opinion?
too many innocent copilots are being injured in a flip over.
The "A" models are more than capable to operate out of soft/unimproved strips, not quite as rugged as conventional gear models, but still up to the task. Unfortunately "some" of our nosewheel friends do not have a clue as to proper soft field operations. Thorough soft field training is essential to staying out of trouble.
maybe a pilot having a bad day or a gust of wind or something else could trigger a chain of events.
Safety isn't just about better pilots/piloting. It can and should include equipment fixes/improvement where a design has a weak point, or as you have suggested, operational adjustments to reduce risk of failure. One of the reasons I chose the -14A is the much more robust nose gear: I hope my skills/technique are enough to never test it but why not take advantage of every opportunity to mitigate risk?
I agree with this comment. There is another thread running on VansAirforce at the moment about an in-flight fire on an RV14A east of Salem that resulted in an emergency landing into a farmer’s field. The interesting thing about that incident is that the beefed up RV14A nose gear with the shock absorber appears to have been robust enough to prevent the aircraft from tipping upside down. If the aircraft had gone over and trapped the pilot inside with the plane on fire the outcome might have been dire indeed.
I did transitional training with Mike Seager so I know what is required to keep the stress off my RV7A nose gear. But I dread the thought of an engine failure leading to an off-field landing on a less than perfect surface. The RV7A nosegear is very fragile and when it fails the plane almost always tips over...that’s the reality. It was good that Vans finally re-engineered the 7A nosegear, but it was 10 years too late.
Pretty good article with two photos:
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-28/plane-crash-at-remote-william-creek-airfield/11354666
that nose wheel should only be used on hard surfaces. if you land on soft fields get the upgrade. Van's should really make that a service bulletin.
William Creek is a well-maintained hard surface (bitumen) runway, so I don't know why that's relevant here.
- mark
My reading of the report is that the brace “did not prevent the accident” because the forces involved in the landing exceeded the capacity of the strut and the brace, not because the brace was ineffective.