20010113000239A

(-23) The owner and pilot, Dr. Correll a. couch, indicated that he was conducting touch and go landings on runway 31 at Castle. Upon completing the last landing before the accident, he was rolling out when the nose swerved to the left. Dr. Couch stated he tried to correct with right rudder but to no avail. The a/c ontinued to the left, breaking off the right main gear. The wing came in contact with the runway and the a/c came to a stop. There was an instructor on board, a Mr. Allen palmer. Mr. Palmer also described the accident as having occurred after the landing during the roll out. He did indicate they had completed a wheel landing and thought the tail wheel had touched down when the loss of control occurred. When questioned as to the cause, Mr. Palmer thought it was due to a gust of wind. Damage was to the right gear, propeller, and right wing and wing tip. There were no injuries. (.4) during an instructional flight, the pilot handling the flight controls ground looped his airplane while landing on runway 31. Prior to the accident, the pilot had successfully performed a series of takeoffs and 3-point landings under the supervision of his flight instructor. However, a wind gus t was encountered during the pilot's last landing. The pilot indicated that he was unable to maintain directional control, the airplane veered left, the right main landing gear collapsed, and the right wing contacted the runway surface and broke. The flight instructor indicated that, at the time, the wind was from the southwest at 10 knots, with 15-knot gusts. The pilot held a commercial pilot certificate and had about 5,000 hours of flight time, but only about 2 hours in his recently purchased tail wheel equipped airplane. The flight instructor, whom the pilot hired to check him out, had 3,469.7 hours of flight time. However, his flying experience in the accident airplane was 5 hours. Runway 31 is 11,802 feet long and 300 feet wide.