Instructing on a Robin

[Troy McClure]

I've recently had cause to instruct on a Robin DR300/140.

When in flight and the oleo at full extension, the nosewheel is designed to lock in place.

On this aircraft, it locks at about 10º to the right of straight ahead, which means that on landing the aeroplane is likely to veer right. Applying left rudder (instinctively) to correct tends to prevent the mechanism from unlocking leading to some hairy moments and runway edge lights getting too close for comfort.

I've found that a positive nose-down stick deflection immediately after landing tends to solve the problem (as does a blip of park brake which shifts weight onto the nose wheel).

On consulting the POH today, I noticed that it states that the nose wheel should lock 'in line with the aeroplane axis'. On this one it doesn't, as is obvious when you put weight on the tail to raise the nose off the ground and the nose wheel springs to the right as the oleo extends.

The owner of the aeroplane has always insisted that there is no fault, but now I'm not sure.

Is this really a design flaw or or is this particular aeroplane broken and should be grounded?

Any advice appreciated.

[Pieman007]

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to be honest. What about when you need right rudder in a crosswind landing, that will make it worse will it not?
Get a couple of weightlifters to lift the nose of the aircraft up when its on the ground and see what happens??
Sounds like there are a couple of springs either side pulling it straight, maybe one of them is shot? pulling it over to the stronger spring side.

[VFE]

Sorry to sound a bit of a 'cee uu next tuesday' here but these kind of postings always alarm me somewhat...

Where is the maintenance dept?

Where is the CFI??

Fair enough if you're on a day off away from the school but so many (experienced) instructors spot a potential problem and sod off home without thinking to pop it on the engineers 'do-list'. Also, many instructors assume that another instructor will highlight the same issue yet this is precisely how an incident or accident could occur. I am not saying I'm innocent of such behaviour myself but it's about time we got our act together is it not?

I have witnessed defects ignored time and time again by instructors at more than one school, usually accompanied with comments from ops such as: "...xxxx xxxxxx flew with it this morning and didn't have a problem wiv it" which seems to be the byword for "... it's okay for you to fly it".

Sometimes yer just gotta be the man to sort it yourself which usually means simply poking yer head around the door of maintanence, getting on the phone to maintanence or popping a line or two on the engineers sheet. Of course, God forbid we ever ground an a/c by putting something in the techlog! I did that once and judging by the horrified looks of onlooking instructors one would think I'd just flopped me cock out on the ops managers desk!*

The culture which leads to instructors trying to gleen answers from an anonymous internet forum is worrying and needs to be addressed. The proper channels are there for such issues so why waste time?
Apologies if this is not the case.

VFE.

* A door on a PA-28 that only opened from the inside after 3 minutes of fiddling with it and no master compass would seem enough to ground an aircraft IMHO. Two instructors had flown with it that day and taken around 3 minutes to get out of the a/c after landing yet still didn't say anything.

[Troy McClure]

Not a school aircraft - owner has approached us to teach his sons to fly, so engineering is not in our hands.

He's been so adamant that there is nothing wrong with it that I was just checking that it's not us being paranoid and that Robins aren't supposed to have the nose wheel lock up in the nose right position - never had a chance to check if any others do the same.

Sounds like we need to refuse to fly it - not like we're paid by the hour anyway.

Incidentally, all paperwork and maintenance records appear to be in order, otherwise we wouldn't be flying it at all.

Thanks for the input.

Troy.

[VFE]

Thought that might be the case Troy (apologies for using your thread to bark on about a pet hate of mine!).

If it's any use - all the Robins I have flown have nose wheels that lock in the straight ahead position.

VFE.

[athonite]

My exprience that Robin's (DR400 & DR200/100) are prone to pilot induced (yaw) oscilation of the nosewheel, this was demonstrated by my FIE when I added the type to my AFI rating many years ago.

[Life's a Beech]

Athonite

That is simply a very effective nose-wheel steering (great turning circle on some of the Robins). There is a tendency for people to over-control if they have little time on type. This sounds like something different.

[Troy McClure]

So, the owner, at our insistence, went back to his engineer, and whadyaknow, it was set up wrong.

Problem has now been solved, owner had to admit that we'd been right all the time, and aeroplane now handles fine.

Still got to go easy on the ground as anthonite says; easy to overcontrol if you're not careful with your feet.

Thanks for all your replies guys.

Troy.

[athonite]

In reply to lfes a beech, you may be right on this point, but isn't it something to do with the nose being slightly offset. I might be wrong it's been a long time!