Why I chose a tricycle.

[jim_geo]

A pictures worth a thousand words.

[svanarts]

Ugh. Makes me hurt just looking at that. The RV-8's are so susceptable to this. The other models with the round spring steel gear legs don't seem to do this. If you don't land an RV-8 straight, it will start to crow hop, and then the landing gear seems to fold under and open up the bottom fuselage just like a can opener. At least it did on a friend's RV-8. I wish they had used a single piece landing gear that carried all the way under the fuselage. But I guess that would have been terribly heavy.

[JohnR]

Man, that does hurt. At least everyone should have been fine. just bent metal. It sure would make you cry though.

[ptrotter]

Scott,

Grove makes a single piece aluminum gear for the RV-8. I am putting one on mine. I think it makes a lot of sense.

[captain_john]

Jim, a gear leg collapse from a hard landing could happen to a nosedragger too!

Especially the front gear leg!

If you have only 2 gear legs, it cuts the liklihood of a gear collapse by 33%! Potentially more based on the nosegear collapse "issue" which we are all aware of.

A hard landing is a hard landing no matter what the airplane or the design.

It is unfortuante for any pilot dealing with a problem like this one you have featured. It is a season killer!

Poor guy...

CJ

PS... Paullie, nice gear!

[JohnR]

Paul, I had seen your gear in another post. I like it.

[cjensen]

That incident happened in 2004, and the guy (Randy Lervold) had just sold the airplane...



EDIT:Here's the whole story right from the horses mouth on that one-from Randy's Website---

The final chapter

It was January 31st, 2004, with local weather typical for this area: low clouds and off/on drizzle. Normally I wouldn’t have been out flying, but I had decided to sell my RV-8 and had a buyer in town all the way from Florida with a check in his briefcase. Peter, who turned out to be a really good guy, and I had spent the morning flying around showing him the plane.

After stops at Lenhardt to talk with Scott McDaniels, Woodland for an early lunch, and Scappoose for a few circuits in the pattern with him on the stick as much as possible, we headed back to Pearson to consummate the transaction. He loved the plane and had decided to buy it.

I monitored the ASOS for Pearson as we proceeded inbound which indicated 10 knots of wind at 170. A quick bit of mental math told me that 170 was exactly 90 degrees to the runway. Upon rolling out on final for runway 8 I could tell the wind was stronger than that and was gusting. Ok, mental checklist for crosswind landing: “right wingtip down into the wind, carry a bit of extra airspeed to compensate for possible windshear, be ready on the stick and rudder for gusts from the right, and be prepared to go around if it gets too squirrelly”.

I made the approach at 85 mph, +5 mph from my normal two-up speed to allow for gusts/shear and proceeded in. I was fighting the gusts all the way down and with the extra speed, and even though we were still on centerline, I just wasn't comfortable with the way it was settling, or not settling, down on the runway, so I gassed it and went around. On the next approach I went back down to 80 mph, my normal two-up speed, hoping to avoid the prolonged float, and thus the amount of time spent exposed to the side gusts, and made a solid approach. I held variable right stick and left rudder down through the flare and got it on the ground solidly and dead straight. “Yea, that’s the way to do it” I said to myself.

Still holding full right stick and a bit of left rudder as we rolled out straight down the runway, I thought I had it nailed. Then, as I was thinking about which taxiway to exit on, and at approximately 30 mph groundspeed (later corroborated by my backseater, a 2,000 hour jet-rated pilot and sailboat racer) a gust hit from the right and the tail started moving left. I kept increasing left rudder to no avail. The gust was so strong, acting on that large RV-8 tail, that it skidded the tailwheel sideways on the wet pavement in spite of my rudder input. We had so little forward speed that the air from the side simply overwhelmed any rudder input and weathervaned the plane around to the right. All of a sudden we were sliding sideways. By the time I thought about jabbing the throttle for some additional rudder authority we were almost 90 degrees and sliding sideways. I was thinking to myself "sh**, this will damage my wheelpants and I'm gonna have to replace 'em before I can sell it". Then the left (lead) wheel shuddered, hopped, and the edge of the rim dug into the pavement. This pogoed the plane up a bit as it passed under us and the left side of the plane collapsed down on the rear corner of the left wing just as we moved off the pavement onto the grass.

As I watched the wing go down I could see the top skin wrinkle and thought "ok, that wing won't be flying any more". It was a strange experience, not tense or scary in any way. I was aware of exactly what was happening every nanosecond and could feel everything. Still, I just couldn't believe it. It was so slow and benign feeling that I couldn't believe the gear collapsed. We were jostled around less than what you would feel in light turbulence while flying. After sliding to a stop I just started shutting the ship down normally in checklist sequence. There was no tension or urgency at all. I smelled no fuel but my backseater said "hey, we better get outa here. I pulled the canopy back and let him exit while I finished my shut down and closed the fuel valve even though there was no fuel smell. I exited calmly, if even a bit more slowly than normal, and said to Peter "now EXACTLY what just happened?".

Well, you know what happened, but I wanted his analysis of the situation to immediately learn what I had done wrong. He agreed that I had flown a beautiful approach, flare, and landing, but we simply got hit with a large gust at precisely the wrong time, during a “window of vulnerability” if you will. Could some combination of rudder, brake, and throttle have saved it if I was a better pilot? I truly don't know. Here are the FAA weather metars listed in the above referenced report... WEATHER: VUOA505 2153Z 17010G17KT 10SM -RA OVC030 7/3 A2993. I landed runway 08, so the "17010G17KT" confirmed the wind direction at exactly 90 degrees with the wind at 10 gusting to 17. Hmm, could a 17 knot gust do that? Felt like more than that to me and my pax both.

The left wing had significant wrinkling in it while the plane was laying on it, presumably from dropping on the runway after the gear folded under. After we propped it up some of the wrinkling went away, but I knew there was no way it should be flown again. The wing tip and aileron were crunched, the left landing gear completely ripped off by the failure of the close tolerance mounting bolts in tension, quite a sight. Unbelievably, nothing FWF touched the ground. I’m sure my new Whirl Wind prop would have been a bunch of carbon fiber splinters otherwise. We managed to get the plane onto a crude trailer and back into my hangar without damaging it further and prop the left side up on wing jacks (glad I had those!). Believe me, getting it off the runway to someplace safe was far more stressful than the incident itself.

Just as we're getting it into the hangar my cell phone starts ringing and I make the mistake of answering it... it's the FAA wanting to know what happened. Great. So I proceeded to give them all the info. They asked me to put all this in a statement and fax it to them, "Monday will be fine". At this point we had it back home and stabilized in the hangar and I just wanted to get away from the whole thing and think about it.

The prospective buyer, Peter, and my wife and I went out to dinner than night but I just felt awful and wanted to crawl up in fetal position in the corner — two glasses of wine at dinner didn't help. Sunday wasn't much better but I forced myself to do the FAA statement anyway.

Monday I spoke with both the insurance agent and adjuster. As the week unfolded and I began the process of dealing with everything I felt a bit better, but it still leaves a very sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. It was two weeks before I could kid about it.

I did have full coverage insurance through the NationAir program with $80k hull coverage. My thinking at the time was that that was about my hard cost into the plane, not including any labor, and the premium increase to take it up to $100k was considerable. And of course “I’ll never get in a wreck anyway”. Yea right. The limit didn't matter in this case anyway because there's no way it was totaled. Overall, damage was confined to the left wing, the left gear leg, and some buckling in the left front fuselage area cause by all the stress to the gear leg box. Due to the way the gear leg attach bolts failed we were able to use hardware store bolts to simply bolt the original, albeit slightly bent, gear leg back on in order to handle and move the plane.

As the events unfolded it worked out surprisingly well. Turns out that one of the guys interested in buying it initially was still interested in buying it as it was. Between the insurance company settlement and what I got from the sale I came out ok — not as good as I would have by selling it originally but under the circumstances I feel like one lucky guy. I must say that dealing with the insurance company was a very satisfactory experience. I was prepared when I met the adjuster with an itemized list of what I thought it would take to repair the plane, both parts and labor. He spent about an hour looking things over and reviewing my estimate. In the end he found it agreeable and I had a settlement form and a check a week later. I have no idea if the other aviation insurance companies handle things this way, but you can bet they will get my business again next time.

So, let’s analyze this, what did I do wrong? After going over it in my mind at least a thousand times, I believe I have the answer. RV-8’s have a bit of a problem with the rudder pedal geometry. Due to the location of the pedal pivot you get a small bit of brake applied whenever you push the rudder pedal with your feet in the normal rudder pedal position. This is well known among -8 builders and the idea of an extension to the bottom of the pedal that allows the ball of your foot to apply pressure below the pivot and thus not activate the master cylinder was crafted by a creative builder. Of course I had installed these (can be seen here) and had been flying with them for probably 250 hours. Here’s my mistake: my mental crosswind landing checklist should have included “put your feet up on the rudder pedals so you can get at the brakes quicker”. Although I’ve managed to get my feet slid up into the braking position during runway weaves in the past, this incident happened so fast I just didn’t have time.

My own take away from this experience is that there are two things I could have, or should have, done differently. #1, choose another airport when there are strong direct crosswinds, and #2, make relocating your feet, or ensuring you have ready brake access, part of your crosswind landing preparation. Could I have saved it if I had had access to a stab of left brake and the right time? Maybe, but we will never know. But I most certainly would have avoided it by landing at another airport. Unfortunately that’s probably what I should have done.

Guys, be careful out there!!

[gsimatos]

Just read this thread and I see there is a comment about the 'nose wheel issue" I and seen lots of accidents involving collapse of the nose wheel on RVs. Is this a recognized weakness for the trike planes??

[svanarts]

Scott,

Grove makes a single piece aluminum gear for the RV-8. I am putting one on mine. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Cool. Is that new? A friend has a Grove landing gear but I didn't think it carried all the way through. If I was building an RV-8, it would have a Grove gear.

[captain_john]

Well, seeing as you have asked...

It is the belief of this pilot that the problem is not with the airplane but the operator.

If a trike is pancaked, the nosewheel sees undue stress. This happens ALOT more than some would care to admit. It is an operator error.

With a tailwheel, the operator could do a ground loop. This is also an operator error.

You puts your monies down and ya takes ya chances!

I just simply like tailwheels for many personal reasons.

CJ

[Wicked Stick]

Scott,

Grove makes a single piece aluminum gear for the RV-8. I am putting one on mine. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Paul,
It looks like you have a row of countersunk screws running across the front Z channel... Is that so you can open up the skins to remove the gear if needed ? Does the one piece Grove Gear have the gun drilled brake lines in them ? If so, how have you decided to route them through the floor ?

[ptrotter]

Dave,

Yes, I put nutplates on the forward Z-bracket. The skin will flex enough that I can slide the gear under it.

The gear has the brake lines gun drilled. I had the threaded connection drilled in the top of the gear. I drilled a .75 in hole in the skin right above it so that a fitting will come up inside the gear tower and I can screw the brake line right into it. Clean and simple.