I was practicing water work in one of the lagoons off Lake Erie, and was doing my last splashdown of the day before heading back to the home field. The approach and touchdown went beautifully, I had throttled back to idle with the stick full back, and the plane was down to about 10mph and slowing fast on the water. Suddenly something bumped my right arm and there was a huge splash! The gear had come down!
The thing that had bumped my arm was the gear retract lever. It had popped out of its locked position and allowed the gear to drop without warning.
No serious damage done, other than a soaked shirt and ego, but now I was on the water with the gear dragging. Now, my plane doesn't have electric start (yet!), so I really didn't want to shut down the engine. The trouble was, I couldn't get the gear to retract while the plane was moving forward, due to the drag of the tailwheel in the water. After trying for a while with no success, I gave up and shut down the engine.
After retracting the gear, I now had to restart. Hoo boy. There's no way to get a good pull on the starter without standing outside the plane - a little tough to do in an unknown depth of water. It would only pull through one compression stroke, which isn't enough to get it going. After pulling my arm off for a while, and cursing at the jet skis which were circling me making waves, I got out the tools and took a couple of pulleys out of the system, which allowed me a longer pull.
At this point there was a nightmare vision going through my mind: I'm turned around backward in the seat- without seatbelts - and the the plane is rocking around on the water. I give the starter a good pull, the engine starts, I knock the throttle, and fall out into the water. My last sight before I drown is the plane taking off without me.
Happily, none of this happened...
It finally started and began moving forward slowly without incident.
After strapping the retract lever down with the other seat belt to prevent another unexpected gear extension, I taxied to the far end of the lagoon, turned into the wind, and throttled up. Takeoff was normal, except it seemed to take longer than usual to get up on the step. Once there, it accelerated normally and I was away.
I have a little wide-angle mirror out on the jury strut so I can check the position of the tailwheel and the tail surfaces in flight. I could see now why it took such a long takeoff run: the tailwheel was stuck straight down, halfway between the retracted and extended positions. I did a little looking around and found that the pulley which the tailwheel retract cable goes around was completely trashed, and the cable was jammed around the side of it. A couple of good yanks on the cable, and I heard a satisfying "thunk" from the tail, meaning that the tailwheel had swung back and locked into place. OK, time to get home.
When I got back to the field (about a 15 minute flight) I decided to take it easy on the tail, since I couldn't tell for sure if everything was locked back there. I brought it in flat with a little bit of power and did a wheel landing, keeping the tail high. By jockeying the throttle and the brakes I was able to use the high thrustline of the engine to keep the tail off the ground until the plane was completely stopped. The wheels stopped turning, I throttled back, and the tail came down with a thump. Must've looked pretty weird to the crowd standing around watching.
I shut down and climbed out, and took a look at the tailwheel. Everything was fine. A new pulley and some readjustment of the system to force a more positive lock on the retract handle, and I was back at it again.
