REFLECTOR: N585V XL/FG main gear failure

[Brett Ferrell via Reflector]

Ron,



I know we can't say they're all bad today, but I'm confident
they're not all good either.  We have quite a bit of
information on Andy's incident.  He indicates that he didn't
land with a locked brake, and I believe him.  I also think that
would be difficult to do on a toe-brake equipped plane, though
not impossible.



Dick's plane had about 80 hours on it, I'm guessing Andy's has
about 100.  Even with abuse these gear should not be failing
this young, which implies it's not related to landing cycles.
These kits were produced 2 apart by XL serial number (3FX013 vs
3FX015).  If it's true that neither of these was a
wheel-locked-on-touchdown event, then it is troubling, and
calls into question the pilot's handbook crosswind landing
statement "another method is to simply land in a wings-level
crab, the landing gear design makes this technique safe and
easy".



One failure I could write-off as an outlier, the second one
starts a trend in my mind.  Especially this young.  If these
were 1,000 hour airplanes like Dave Nelson's, maybe I'd suspect
fatigue or cumulative abuse.  My airplane is serial number 23,
so I have a vested interest in understanding.  I'm curious how
many hours the fixed gear XL fleet airplanes have on them.  If
folks would send their hours to me, I'll compile a list and
post it to both lists.



Brett

--
Brett Ferrell
reflector at velocityxl.com





On Mon, Aug 18, 2014, at 11:52 AM, Velocity wrote:

It is a little early to go running off saying all gear legs are
bad. Very little info is out on what really happened on both
gear legs.





On 8/18/2014 9:02 AM, Brett Ferrell via Reflector wrote:

I would love for it to just be a bad batch, but unless the
factory gives us some indication of something being different
from date (or serial number) x to y, based on this person made
them or somesuch, I don't see how you can assume yours is going
to be OK...



--
Brett Ferrell
[1]reflector at velocityxl.com

References

1. mailto:reflector at velocityxl.com
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