I made my 6th flight today, and after flying for .8 hours, came in to
land
after I noticed that I had a vacuum failure, and did not put the
nose gear
down.  Talk about running my day, it definitely was not good, but
could have
been much worse.

I was evidently distracted by wondering about what happened to the
vacuum,
instead of doing my landing checklist.  I was worried that I could
have lost
a belt, so I was keeping a watchful eye on the temperatures.  I
did,
however, turn on the boost pump, and check fuel.  I haven't been
used to
having to put the gear down, and coupled with the distraction, and
stupidity, was the formal for a problem.

I came in high and a little on the fast side, in fact, I couldn't
figure out
why I wasn't descending, and bleeding speed.  How about the fact
that the
gear was up.  I was deploying both rudders, and marveling over how
well that
worked to get the altitude problem solved.  Apparently the AEX was
in the
process of extending the gear when I touched down, which probably
saved me
from allot more damage.  I landed a little faster than I had been,
and sat
it down without letting it float along like all of my other
landings.  If I
had landed like I did before, the extra 4 or 5 seconds could have
let the
gear get all the way down...but it didn't.

Damage was really no too bad.  Ground off the face of the landing
gear strut
about 1/8" ground the front of the castoring nose wheel casting flat
in one
spot, and ground off about half of the hockey puck.  As soon as I
realized
what had happened, I pulled back all the way on the elevator, and
hit the
nose gear switch, which was already turning.  The nose came up and I
was
still rolling at maybe 20-30 MPH.  I pulled off on a taxiway, shut
down, and
got out to inspect the damage.  I expected the worst, but really was
pretty
minimal.  I decided that everything was good enough to taxi back to
the
hanger, where I pulled the nose cover to check for any other
damage.
Everything inside looked fine.  The nose lift is fine.  The landing
gear
strut will have to be replaced, as well as the lower casting on the
nose
wheel assembly.  I may forget allot of things in the future, but
I'll bet
that landing gear won't be one of them.

I pulled the engine cowling, and the belt on the smog pump that I
use for
vacuum was fine, so I still don't know the cause of the vacuum
problem.  I
need to pull the canard, and I/P cover anyway to troubleshoot a NAV
system
problem, so I'll get to the bottom of it when I do that.  I'll have
plenty
of time while I'm waiting on parts.
The only damage to the nose at all was a couple of cracks in the
micro
around the hockey puck.  I'll have to sand it down to get the rest
of the
puck off anyways, so that isn't a big deal.

The good news is that my noise in the right main wheel is fixed.  I
took it
apart, really didn't find anything, but I repacked the bearings, and
put it
all back together and the noise is gone.  I guess that it must have
been an
alignment issue with the disk or something.  I was careful to snug
the bolts
with the same torque while mounting the disk to the wheel.  I think
that may
have been the issue.

Also the engine continues to run superbly.  I still am running
warmer than I
like, but I have a plan to remedy that.  The rotary engine is so
smooth and
quiet that you forget it's running almost.

Steve Brooks
Cozy MKIV N75CZ
Turbo rotary




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