For those who fly....

[flyboy71]

The pilots on here will appreciate this story realizing how hard this could have been. Back in 1998 my Grandfather and I were in our plane, he was in the left seat and I was right, assisting him with some practice. Winds were 15MPH gusting to 20MPH crosswind and semi variable. He insisted we fly so I reluctantly agreed. It was obvious at takeoff when we could barely keep the plane level it was way too bad to fly so we took it around for a landing. It was tough holding the control yoke steady let alone try to land the plane but again he insisted he land the plane while I tried to assist. He hadnt been up for a while so he was a bit rusty. Needless to say we landed and porpoised down the runway before I got control and got us airborne again. Next radio contact from the airport was "three seven golf your nosewheel is lying on the runway". Long story short we flew 20 MI east to a larger airport and I had one shot to land the plane without incident. Bouncing around on final for RWY 26 I brought it down, flared for landing, held the nose as long as possible, shut off the engine so the prop wouldnt strike, and when the nose finally dropped we scraped to a stop. The front fork left a 1 FT long scrape in the concrete runway. Whew! We made the 6pm news that evening. Within 10 minutes after landing a nasty squall line of thunderstorms went through. We were VERY fortunate that day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShUpwh9Ycic

[Happy_Camper]

Cool job of landing! Pretty crazy way to make the news though.
what kind of investigation did you have to go through with the FAA?
Cesna's are tough little planes.

[flyboy71]

Well I'll tell you the pucker factor was pretty high the whole flight. I didnt even think about the landing I just did it and whatever happened happened. We were in the air long enough beforehand getting cleared into controlled airspace that the news had time to get there. I think ATC didnt wanna volunteer a busy airport for our emergency but it was the difference between landing on a sidewalk or a freeway as far as runways go. Im not sure that the FAA report was much at all since it was an incident and didnt cause harm or damage to people or other structures. It was a weird feeling jumping out after landing not knowing if the fork ripped anything under the cowl and standing there waving at a sea of emergency crews coming our way. The total damage was a fork, axle, wheel, and engine mount...since the fork and strut attach to the mount. Ran somewhere in the neighborhood of about $2000 to fix. Airplanes are fun but very expensive to maintain.

Airplane is long gone since I and my Grandfather technically cant medically qualify to fly. Maybe I will again someday.