Punctures and reporting.
Here's an odd question.
This weekend I went on a trip - on returning to Barbados from Tortola I was planning to refuel in Martinique, but weather closed it even to IFR, so diverted to Guadeloupe on landing - maybe my best ever, long, long hold off of the nose wheel (someone was watching over me), as soon as it touched - wucker, wucker, wucker - I shut the plane down 20% of the way down the airport - yep a nose wheel puncture.
Got it repaired this morning - the cause small metal fragments INSIDE the tyre between the tyre and inner tube - seems they moved around and made scratches in the surface of the inner tube and slow puncture.
I shut it down so quick that there was no damage to the wheel spat (nor the tyre) - the fire service had to retrieve the airplane from the runway - being a Sunday and French Mother's Day - no engineers - it got promptly fixed this morning and we flew home to Barbados.
Now here is the question - it is a US registered airplane - no "damage" it is something I have to report to the NTSB or anyone else (we had the Gendarmes at TFFR) - probably will anyway as it seems that the metal fragments were picked up when the tube, tyre and wheel were assembled - has a new nose wheel and tyre installed about 40 hours prior to the puncture.
I have a very nice GPS track with speeds etc. of the events, seems the fire service got their tow vehicle up to 40mph +
