grahamr@bronze.UUCP (Graham Ross) (07/30/83)
The pilot and mechanic seem to disagree as to what happened to N6495V, a Cessna Cutlass based at Hillsboro, Oregon. Seems it ate the asphalt on a recent landing at its home airport. The pilot says that when he lowered the nose after touchdown, the nose hit the runway and the prop bit the dust; therefore, the gear must have malfunctioned. The mechanic says that the gear was working fine; that somebody raised the gear after the mains touched down and before the nose gear touched down. The mains sat on the squat switches, but the nose retracted. The pilot distinctly remembers raising the FLAPS to improve braking efficiency after touchdown. He is quite sure that it was the little lever on the right side of the pod, not the big one on the left side of the pod. I don't know who's right, but the moral is: Don't clean up flaps on a plane with retractable gear until clear of the runway. If you want to land on a runway so slippery and/or short that you need the brakes that bad, then you are probably in the wrong airplane. The airplane will be test-flown tomorrow, after being in the shop for a week or two. They fitted a new prop, four new pieces of skin, and tore the engine down to make sure the crank wasn't sheared. Four aboard; no injuries.