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Responses below
John:
GREAT write-up!!
Glad
to hear you and the airplane are OK. It is also REALLY encouraging to see
how much support you got, especially at such a busy time as race week at
Reno.
If you don't mind, a couple of follow-up questions to you and/or
the group:
* What kind of Lancair were you flying?
Legacy
* Are all Lancairs prone to this
problem that, if I understand correctly, the pads wear out.... the brake bottoms
out.... you loose ALL your fluid and braking? (!!!)
If the pads wear very thin or, as in my case, disappear into the ether,
the piston is able to protrude from its housing enough that the o-ring is
exposed and there goes your fluid (and the o-ring). The consensus view is
that the pads came off because they were allowed to get critically thin. I
can't refute that but, based on prior experience, long before they got that
thin, I should have been getting rivet gouges in the disc (which I did not
get.) So, like most things in aviation it is a mystery to me
.
* Is
there anything you will do (or we could do) differently to keep this from
happening?
Obviously, check brake pads regularly. Cleveland has a gapper
tool (piece of plastic) that you can use to
determine if there is enough remaining pad. The night before in the
middle of braking on landing, the brake failed completely but pumped right back
up. The next morning I inspected carefully and there was no sign of
hydraulic leakage so I suspected an air bubble in the system. Brakes
worked fine on start, taxi and t/o. In retrospect, it was a sign.
Biggest thing I did wrong was not shutting down as soon as I got off the
runway. There was no need to test the system at that point and, with an
obvious control problem there was just no decent reason to do what I did.
Isn't hindsight neat?
Thanks again for the
report.
Regards,
Erik Larson
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