Freezing water and slush are not unique hazards to retract gear. Wheel pants can also collect enough freezing water, slush, etc. from the runway to lockup the wheel while you fly around. Try landing with the main gear wheels locked. Fortunately in my case, I landed on a grass strip with a tri-gear aircraft, but it was the shortest landing I have ever made. Pavement would likely have produced two or three blown tires at best. A tail wheel aircraft would have flipped easily. In that frozen wheel situation you have not a clue if that wheel will roll on landing or not until actual touchdown. Sid Wood Mechanicsville, MD USA sidney.w...@titan.com
Subject: KR> Re:Wet Runways in the winter > Just a note to tell you about a flight that i made today in my KR that > can remind all of us about what can happen if you don,t take ALL of > the weather factors into concideration when you go flying. As a side > note i probably have one of the last krs that still have the retracts. > For those of you that made the gathering this year my KR was the one with > the full clamshell gear doors. This is all relevent to the story. Flying > a KR in the north in the winter means that you usually don,t have that > many days that you can fly without freezing to death so you take everyday > that you can get and today was such a day. The temp was in the mid 20,s > with bright sun and not too much of a cross wind at the field where i > base my plane. We had just had a large snow storm 2 days before but thr > runway ws plowed with mostly bare pavement showing. As i taxied my plane > to the active i passed over a lot of snow patches and damp spots on the > black pavement. Takeoff was normal and. i headed for a local airport > about 20 miles away. Ther was a lot of traffic at the field so i > extended my upwind leg a ways to allow for spacing. After entering > downwind i reached to lower the landing gear only to find that it was > frozen solid in the up position. Pucker factor riseing rapidly at this > point. After several min,s of trying i was begining to think that the > only option was that i was giong to have to land on the ski runway on the > belly. I tried one last dive with a sharp pullout while pulling to lower > the gear at the same time when it finally broke loose. I proceeded to > land and when i got out to look the wheel wells were full of ice from the > snow and water that had splashed into them. I flew home with the gear > extended with no further problems. Now i will have to get my plane into a > heated hanger to melt all of the ice before i go flying again. This > turned out to have a happy ending but it could have gone the other way > with a plane that needed a lot of repairs. I have been flying this plane > for 18 years and this is the first time that this has happened. It has > given me a new preflight and taxi item to check. Maybe this will help > someone else from having a similar problem. Kip
