Nose wheel pant contacted the runway

Below is text I copied from a post I made to the Anti Splat "Nose Job" a review thread.

I am posting my comments from that thread as a new thread here because of my discovery that my nose gear wheel pant had come into contact with the runway sometime in the past. I was shocked to see marks on my wheel pant after removing it to install the Anti Splat Nose Job. My comments below and subsequent pictures are verbatum from the above mentioned thread. I felt it important to repost here as I wanted to make sure others who may not be following the Nose Job thread can be aware of the possibility of having your nose wheel pant come into contact with the ground even if you may not be aware of it doing so.

Here is an excerpt of my original post from here:

I received my Nose Job on my door step on Thursday when I arrived home from work. However, it would have to wait a while before installation. We had plans to fly to Petit Jean first thing Friday morning. My wife and I flew out to Arkansas and had a wonderful time. We had plans to stay through Sunday before coming home. As it turns out, the weather was not going to cooperate for a flight home Sunday so we ended up leaving Saturday afternoon instead. This left me with time on my hands Sunday. The sun was out at the airport and it turned out to be a warm day. So out I go to install the Nose Job.

Here is my report with pictures of the installation. Ok, before we go any further I have to make comments on this first photo.


This was quite a shock when I pulled the front nose pant off of the gear!

What the. . .! Look at those groove marks! Those are directly underneath the big nut in front of the yoke. Now I live on a grass strip and at least one landing on every trip involves landing on grass. Well, I am going to tell you, no grass I have ever landed on is tough enough to put those kind of grooves in fiberglass. No, those were caused by some asphalt somewhere, sometime. I cannot be sure when exactly.

When would this have happened? I have no memory of any landings that might have caused this. No taxi incidents that I am aware of. Hmmm. Not cool! We picked the plane up from Grady on January 1, 2011 so the paint on this wheel pant is not even a year old. The best time frame I can think of would be that this happened sometime between the conditional inspection (July 20th) and Sunday (November 6th). Sometime the nose gear oscillated enough to allow the nose gear pant to come into contact with a hard surface. If you look closely you can see black tar in between some of the grooves. Yes, indeed, this fiberglass was rubbed up against asphalt sometime, but for the life of me, I cannot imagine when this would have occurred.

Now I have commented to several individuals in the past about the landing technique and taxi technique involved in maneuvering our A models on the ground. I have always felt it very important to keep the nose gear off the ground as long as possible when touching down and to make a point to keep the stick rubbing against my belt buckle whenever the airplane is on the ground. I have always landed on the mains and held the stick back until the nose just would not stay up any longer. In my opinion, this is the only way to land these A model airplanes. And it is what I have always done.

Given this I am somewhat taken aback by this discovery. Having done exactly as described above at all times, I find this wheel pant has still come into contact with the ground at some time. This gives great pause for thought.

So, for all of you guys out there flying without wheel pants on your A model nose gear pay heed to this. Here is pictorial evidence of how that fiberglass may save your bacon sometime. In my case, I didn't even know it had happened!

Live Long and Prosper!

I'm surprised that you are surprised

I developed subfairings for the wheel fairings on our RV-6A for racing drag reduction that require that my chocks made of 3/4" angle be used to clear them. The tires compress and the runways and taxiways are NOT perfectly smooth, joints, storm drain ports, rocks, bolts, screws, etc. I routinely touch mine up at ACI time and when I do any mod work on them. I agree with your skid plate benefits observation. My lower fwd surface is probably 10 layers thick following repairs etc. The original build of the subfairing was 3 layers.

Bob Axsom

I reinforced that area with carbon fiber several years ago.

your surprise at my surprise

I guess my surprise comes from the fact that I never had any indications from past taxi or landings that the nose gear ever came into contact with anything. Whenever it was that this happened there was no tactile sensation that it had occurred at all. I have no idea when this might have occurred so to pull the wheel pant off Sunday and see these marks was quite revealing.

I know now I will never be operating this airplane without the wheel pant on the nose gear!

Nosewheel fairing scratches from grass to asphalt transition

My nosewheel fairing looks exactly the same. I know with certainty that I scraped it when taxiing from grass onto asphalt, while leaving a fly-in breakfast when I had been parked out in the grass. There was just enough of a bump going up onto the asphalt to scrape the paint off the fairing. Now I am much more cautious before making the grass to hard surface transition, I check out the area on foot before taxiing in the airplane. A lot of times the height of the grass makes it hard to tell how much of a step there is between the turf and the hard surface.

I highly doubt the scrapes shown in the picture above happened during takeoff/landing phase, but I could be wrong.

--Mark Navratil
RV-8A N2D
Spring Hill, KS

czechsix said:

My nosewheel fairing looks exactly the same. I know with certainty that I scraped it when taxiing from grass onto asphalt, while leaving a fly-in breakfast when I had been parked out in the grass. There was just enough of a bump going up onto the asphalt to scrape the paint off the fairing. Now I am much more cautious before making the grass to hard surface transition, I check out the area on foot before taxiing in the airplane. A lot of times the height of the grass makes it hard to tell how much of a step there is between the turf and the hard surface.

I highly doubt the scrapes shown in the picture above happened during takeoff/landing phase, but I could be wrong.

--Mark Navratil
RV-8A N2D
Spring Hill, KS

Click to expand...

Good observation. I have been to several flyins in the last couple of months where I have parked on grass and transitioned from the grass to asphalt to taxi. That is a distinct possibility for the cause of these gouges.

H-u-m-m-m-m

allbee said:

I been flying mine for 2years and 550hrs. I have never seen this type of thing and I have never let my front slam down on landing. Nore have I ever done a three point landing. I think this system your so raving is for the inexperienced lander. Sorry I can't hold out any longer.

Click to expand...

High water pants help if you are not serious about drag reduction. FOD happens. If you look at the photographed damage and think about it I think you will observe point contacts and not a bottom out broad scrape from slamming it into the runway on landing. When that happens the paint is scraped off across the fairing across the whole area in front of the tire - usually extending farther forward in the center of the fairing. The original poster is not crying about the scrape so much as to point out that the fairing provides a surface that reduces the risk of digging the end of the strut into the ground. When I modified my nose wheel fairing to bring it down to the tire below the side deflection point close to the ground and close to the tire surface I got a significant speed increase. My landings are pretty good usually but the scrape risk in my application is well worth the ocassional paint touch up on the normally unexposed bottom surface near the front of the tire.

Bob Axsom

wheel chocks?

Happened to me too

My 7A has similar marks on the nose wheel pant, I know exactly when it happened. I had just touched down and gently let the nose wheel touch down around 50 - 55 MPH. Two deer came out of nowhere directly crossing my path and I had no choice but to really get on the brakes. I could feel the plane pitch forward and was really concerned the nose gear would collapse. The runway was perfectly flat with no cracks or pot holes.

This happened with approx 800 hours on the pane so I was not a newbie at how to land it.

I ordered the anti-splat product and will be installing it within the next few week.

Be careful out there
Gary
N715AB
925 hours

fibreglass vs asphalt etc.

..just a data point, that I would consider the wheelpant as a type of litmus test, that indicates contact, not as insurance against the nosewheel nut digging in!
There have been many posts about this, but I'd consider laying up several broad straps of aluminum and flox inside the nose under the nut as the minimum for a 'skid plate' type mod.
that said, I would fully expect this to slide exactly 11.6 feet on asphalt....before wearing thru or catching fire from the friction! Remember, you have about 1500 pounds in motion...serious energy that is not easily dissipated!
...... I consider it a bit of a 'bacon saver' ski for soft ground only.

INCREASED FAIRING GROUND CLEARANCE

With the current newer style nose wheel fork there is a considerable gap between the bottom of the strut/nut and the fairing. I have remade and reinforced the front part of my nose wheel fairing so there is greater ground clearance between the bottom of the fairing and the ground.

Fin
9A

What do you have for a wheel bearing and axle setup on your plane?

RVbySDI said:

Good observation. I have been to several flyins in the last couple of months where I have parked on grass and transitioned from the grass to asphalt to taxi. That is a distinct possibility for the cause of these gouges.

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I refuse to taxi my RV-6 from asphalt to grass even though marshals at fly-in breakfasts try it sometimes. I messed up a wheelpant several years ago when I taxied off an asphalt transition so that is now a no-no. I just shake my head until they get the idea that my plane shall be parked on the ramp.

Tire Pressure Big Potential Problem!!!!!!!

I don't want to scare or alarm anyone But here goes. There is a potential problem that really scares me because I have had some first hand experience to pull from. There is a potential for disaster looming here that no one has seemed to address or for that mater even acknowledged its existence. This will make you very nervous, as well it should. I had an experience that demonstrated to me just how important tire pressure is. I rolled out on the runway and hit the throttle beginning my takeoff roll. As the speed increased to perhaps 20 mph or so I hit a nail, piece of glass or something that caused the nose wheel to rapidly loose air. The wheel pant instantly contacted the ground and the entire gear assembly started to rapidly oscillate violently for and aft at an incredible rate. With no air in this tire the plane is high and dry on the wheel pant and normally will not move. I pulled off the throttle but the plane was on its own. Had there been a crack or flaw in the runway surface that provided an opportunity for the gear to bite in I am pretty sure I would now be part of the statistics. Luckily this worked out OK with no major damage to plane or person. My fear is this, What if on takeoff you unknowingly pick up a leak in your nose wheel. In flight the tire goes flat and now you need to land. When you do let the nose down you will be traveling much faster than I was and totally unprepared for the events that are about to unfold. I now run an 8 ply tire, the thick heavy duty tube and tire sealer in the nose wheel. Even with all this extra effort, I am still paranoid. Regards, Allan

I never had a flat but I still hate tubes... switched to the Beringer TUBELESS nose wheel.

The way I look at it is there is one less thing to worry about! Plus Beringer is a VAF advertiser and they do make a great wheel.



I will also add that some time ago when I switched over to the new style fork I trimmed the front of the fairing up higher and then added some filler into the front part of the fairing between the nut and the fairing. This way if I do ride on the front of the fairing the nut is carrying the load with the fairing acting as a skid.



I also have the Antisplat that I will be installing as soon as I have some time.

We each have our application



I have proven to myself the this is a much faster configuration in testing and racing ~3kts at 6000 ft dalt WOT ... If I get time I plan to make new molds and build up 2-piece racing replacements for the current 4-piece configuration (just for me).

Bob Axsom

I've rebuilt the front NG pant several times, mostly from jumping grass to hard surface.

Interesting clearance dimensions illustrated here. Bob's looks fast, mine is about where Walt's is.

Tire pressure up front is important. I run with 45 psi and check it now and then when it begins to look a bit low. Had one flat landing on soft turf, fortunately the pant acted like a ski and it was of no consequence.

Next airplane will be an 8. (...dream on, dream on...)

bkthomps said:

wheel chocks?

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If you are asking if wheel chocks may have caused this, NO. I use a 1" piece of angle aluminum for my wheel chocks when away from home. Besides, it may not be obvious in the photo but these grooves are deep gouges. It is not just scrapes in the paint. The grooves have dug out a significant amount of the fiberglass on the wheel pant.

Allbee, I also have never let my nose gear slam down on landing. I am very conscious of the possible problems with the A model nose gear. Consequently, I have refined my landing practice to make sure that I keep the nose wheel off of the ground and only slowly allow it to settle down to the ground when it will not fly any longer. I do not believe the damage displayed is due to slamming the gear down.

I do believe there is a great deal of oscillation occurring in the normal operation of the nose gear. Just this weekend at Petit Jean while riding in a van along side the runway there was a fellow A model RV'er taxiing down the runway beside us. He had the elevator up and was taxiing normally on an asphalt runway that I considered pretty smooth. The nose wheel was oscillating forward and backward intensely. He was doing everything correctly and the gear was still going crazy. I wish I had taken some video of it. It was a very interesting observation.

I couldn't find if this has already been brought-up, but...

I wonder how a foam-filled nose tire would work out? If the foam was the "right" durometer...? ...and balanced.

Could be a little heavy.
I replaced the tire on my wheel barrow with a solid, spongy, tire. No flats.
Just a random thought.