Prop Strike!!!!!

Yesterday I scheduled myself for a two hour slot in N1423T to work on my pattern work around PWK and to get some solo time in. I was a little nervous as the winds were around 9 knots and my first solo was in dead calm air. On the way to the airport I tuned into PWK tower to get a feel for the amount of traffic in and around the airport. I always try to listen to both ATIS and the tower before my lesson, I write down the ATIS info on one of those sporty's post it notes designed just for ATIS information. This helps me because I don't have to worry as much about the ATIS info while sitting in the cockpit going through my preflight checklists. I just check the ATIS in the plane to make sure that the info I wrote down is still current. Also having all of the freqs jotted down is very usefully to me as I always seem to forget what PWK ground freq is.

Anyway as I pull up to area three parking lot I see that my instructor and his previous lesson have just landed. After he signs the student's log book he tells me that N1423T is grounded. I asked the reason. Well as it turns out a student going out on a solo flight, I am not sure if it was his first or not, banged the prop pretty bad. Thus the grounding of N1423T.





I saw this accident as an opportunity to learn from other mistakes. I asked my instructor to tell me the particulars of the accident. According to my instructor, the student came in over the threshold fairly hot and as a result bounced/ballooned the touchdown. He then attempted to recover unsuccessfully and bounced again. At this point he was about 7 or so feet in the air with out much airspeed and proceeded to stall the plane. The stall forced the plane into a somewhat nose down attitude. It was in the attitude that the plane came down to the runway, landing pretty hard on the front gear and banging the prop. The aftermath of the accident was a badly bent prop and damaged front gear. I was told that luckily the engine never quit. Apparently if you hit the prop hard enough to stop the engine there is a very high likelihood of engine damage, most likely to the crankshaft.

So what do we learn from this? Well my take away was a couple of things:

• Approach speed is so key to a good landing
• Don't be afraid to go around. If anything doesn't feel right. . . Go around

The bad news about all of this is really for the flight school. N1423T had just gotten back from getting a new zero time engine put in. I am really bummed too as this was the plane I soloed in and really felt good flying in her. I hope that she comes back as good as she was before the incident.

I am scheduled to fly again to night, only this time in N560DH. The game plan for tonight is for me to go up with my instructor and fly to KUGN land a couple times and get signed off to solo at KUGN. Next on the agenda is flying to Campbell (C81) land a couple times and get signed off for solo there as well. Finally, head back to KPWK to drop off my instructor and finish out the rest to my scheduled time for the day working on my pattern and landing skills.