It was too good to be true. Plane was running great and Sandy agreed to accompany me to the Tandem Wing Field of Dreams event, held this year in Orange, MA. Our annual gathering of Quickie type aircraft. Orange was going to be a long trip, but I have never flown the Quickie in that part of the country before, so we were planning a little additional sight seeing.
It was a nice day and the weather looked good for the whole route. Actually, my fuel injected Quickie Q-200 has enough fuel to make it non-stop, but we decided to take a break and land at the
Zelienople Municipal Airport. Try and pronounce that name.
When it was time to depart, I used Rwy 17. Since there were hills around and the light winds were shifting, I elected to use the displaced threshold, which is about 500 feet long. I put the pedal to the metal and accelerated normally. All of a sudden we veered to the right. WTF?!?! We went into the grass, across a connecting taxiway and down a shallow embankment. We hit pretty hard and the left canard broke about 20" outboard of the fuselage, which in turn, caused a prop strike.
It turns out the right gear hit a two inch deep puddle of standing water, which caused the sudden veer to the right, directing us off the runway. The water has been there a long time, as evidenced by the Google Earth photo below. It turns out they will be replacing the entire runway next year - about a year too late.
We were uninjured.
Long story short, single Quickie driver and racer Nathan Peck came to the rescue and hauled a trailer all the way from the St. Louis area to pick us up and drags us home. What a guy!
As always, click on the photo to see it better.
 |
| On our way to Orange, MA. Little did we know... |
 |
| This is why we fly! |
 |
| Pool of standing water. Since there had been recent rain, it was larger the day of our incident. |
 |
| Taken perhaps five minutes after the incident. |
 |
| Duck tape won't fix this one. |
 |
| What fun is a runway excursion without a prop strike? This will require an engine tear-down and inspection. I only had 30 hours on that prop since I had it refinished. Rats. |
 |
| Fortunately, there just happened to be a crane on site. |
 |
| Our rescuer, Nathan Peck |
 |
| Ready for the long drive home |
3 comments:
Sorry to hear about your incident, glad nobody was injured. I look forward to watching the repairs.
AWW MAN ! Glad it was not serious.
Not serious?
Post a Comment