May 16, 2018
During the landing roll, the aircraft started drifting to the left and the pilot applied right rudder to correct. He subsequently attempted to apply right brake pressure to further correct for the drift as the airplane was traveling about 50 knots. At that time, the right brake pedal “went to the floor,” and there was “zero” right brake available. The airplane departed the left side of the runway, crossed the grass, and came to rest on the parallel taxiway.
A post-recovery examination revealed that the nylon right brake line was broken near the upper end of the landing gear strut. The airplane was equipped with a free-castering nosewheel and did not have any nosewheel steering capability.
Exactly the reason I removed the nylaflow brake lines from my airplane this spring.
A friend’s Long-Ez was substantially damaged in a similar incident due to a failure of the Nylaflow brake line, possibly because the tubing was weakened where it was inadvertently pinched. The accident motivated me to replace the brake lines in my VariEze with 1/8” stainless steel tubing last year.
Stephen K
Perhaps you would be willing to put together a more detailed report of these two experiences for inclusion into the Canard Owners and Builders Association (COBA) Forum (forum@canarfowners.com) to benefit all canard operators worldwide with your observations?
John Caulkins
Stephen K
My apologies! The URL should be corrected to “forum@canardowners.com”.
John Caulkins