The next approach was flawless, settling in at a comfy 90 and rolling on at 85. She rolled out wonderfully, answering her brakes without comment. We taxied up and got out. Everything looked fine. Whew. Let everyone know we’re down safe.

Upon further review the main gear pants took some scuffing on the inside. That’s to be expected. When I looked at the down blade on the prop I saw the evidence of a strike. Hmmm. Just the one blade. Then I thought about Bill’s comments about hard landing and the nose pant. Sure enough, it’s MIA. The whole thing. I have to defod the runway, where I found it in 3 pieces. Morning inspection would reveal that it went under the nose wheel, gored the belly below Beth, and shot up against the pilot side strake and hit the very tip of the one blade.

I can’t say enough about Craig Catto getting right back to me on flying it home and repairing the damage. I checked the gear out, and it seemed no worse for the wear. We ran the engine to full power o. The ramp and checked for vibration after cleaning the prop up with my nail file. I cleared the plane to fly home. Beth wanted to fly home solo. She felt responsible for the damage and thought putting us both at risk flying home was unwise. I couldn’t argue that, but I wanted to be there to keep her calm. She assured me she’d be more calm knowing I was safe, so I agreed.

I watched her sunup and takeoff, and she agreed to climb over the airport and feel the plane out before heading south. I kept a radio with me so I could talk to her. Everything checked out so she headed south. I listened to talk to Dayton as long as I could and worried while I drove back to Lebanon. Needless to say, she did great and was soon enough back in the friendly confines of our hangar.

The Fox will be good as new shortly, though she got her hair mussed a bit. We also brought Andy’s prop home to try. I’ll be in Vegas all week, so Jerry will be doing the triage. We expect that she’ll be ready to fly to Cape May by the weekend, and I hope Beth will get in a comfort flight by then. We’ll see, and there’s always the weather, but I’m hopeful, and that would make this a fairly cheap lesson. If the airplane is moving stay vigilant, no landing is routine. My lady and my wife are troopers. Beth could’ve locked up and a bad situation could’ve gotten very ugly. She also could’ve easily decided she wasn’t up to flying the wounded Fox home. I’m a very lucky man.