Subject: ground handling
Gary McKirdy phoned to night to say that during ground testing his tail wheel
tyre deflated at aroud 25 knots and he was just a passenger with full rudder
doing nothing to stop a spin to the right which ended with the outrigger
folding back untill the wingtip scraped along the tarmac runway stick fullback
and no brakes applied but the tail came up till the prop hit the deck. One
blade wrecked and some paint to repair but Gary is sure thar had he had a
puncture during take off and had to land with a flat tyre the result would
have
been much worse. Praps we know now why we've got that solid tyre on the back
these days. Ron S No33
Reading the above reminded me of the main wheel puncture I had at Kemble on
landing a couple of years ago. I was doing my type conversion in G-WWWG with
Martin Stoner. Apart from inflicting a rather nasty blow to Martin's nether
regions as I snapped the Joy stick back. We tracked straight and stopped in
about 80 meters. Virtually nil cross-wind helped! About 2mm off the
bottom of
the brake housing was the only (other!) damage. Look forward to seeing you
all
at the Christmas dinner? Bill
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