Getting back to thinking about flying...N131JF has been sleeping since last October, when a hard landing at Lancaster damaged the landing gear attachment points. I was landing a heavy plane in gusty conditions, and the sink rate on final suddenly increased because I was too slow, and I was half a second late on throttling up. We only just hit the ground, but the impact was hard, sufficient to give Mary a shock, and it turned out that it was sufficient to damage the attachment points. After initially hitting the runway, I lifted off, settled the plane and touched down with what seemed like an uneventful rollout and taxi-back to the hangar. I did not notice the damage until I went to park the plane in the hangar, when I felt the gear moving forwards and backwards under the plane as I lifted the nose.
A brief examination of the damage through the "hell hole" by Jesse and myself a few days after the incident, led to the tentative conclusion that the spruce bases of the landing gear attachments had already been damaged in a previous hard landing (probably the hard landing at New Bight in the Bahamas in 2009). This latest hard landing completed the job, so to speak. We will find out for sure whether that was the sequence of events, once the plane is readied for repair, which will probably involve removing the existing wooden mounting points for the gear, along with a lot of bonding layups.
Major work pressure in the Fall and Winter prevented immediate start on the repairs, although I have all of the materials procured and awaiting use. Since the start of 2012 we have been busy with working on house projects and other stuff such as Getting Married.
Repairs and TLC on the plane will start this Fall and continue through the winter, with the objective to have the plane up and running in improved form by Spring 2013.
There were a number of squawks and operational limitations on the plane that have crept in over the years, which had made regular flight operations stressful. Those will be addressed this Winter, the goal being to have a squawk-free plane with no worries in the cockpit, allowing the focus to be on flight execution and enjoyment.