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The pilot began a slow decent toward the airport and when approximated 20-25 miles south of 74P I heard a thud emanating from the lower airframe. He scanned the flight instruments and noted nothing unusual. His airspeed at the time was approximately 155 mph. He then looked at the mirror mounted under the lower starboard wing and noted the landing gear had dropped out of the well about ¼ of the normal swing. He noted nothing unusual on the gear lever which was in the up position so he slowed the aircraft to less than 140 mph which is maximum gear extension speed and attempted to cycle the landing gear to the down position with no effect. He then checked the circuit breaker, which was in, and then attempted to cycle the landing gear to the up position with no effect. He next pulled the landing gear circuit breaker and reset it and repeated the process, with no effect again. He checked the gear indicator lights per the POH and all were in working order.

He then slowed to less than 110 mph and engaged 20 degrees of flaps after which he again attempted to cycle the landing gear normally, again, to no effect. At this point he was still over an unpopulated area well south of the town of Pahrump and began the manual landing gear extension procedure per the POH by reducing airspeed to 80 mph and placing the gear lever in the down position to begin the hand pump procedure. He orbited this area while pumping and observing the mirror to see the position of the landing gear. He succeeded in lowering the gear further to somewhere between half and 2/3 of the way down but no matter how much he used the hand pump he never got pressure feedback in the mechanism.

He then continued toward the airport at reduced speed and called on the UNICOM frequency at 74P and finally raised another aircraft just landing there. The pilot told me he would get his hand held radio while he made a low pass so as to observe and report the landing gear position. He was told by the other pilot that the landing gear was not fully extended so he took the aircraft northeast of the airport and once again attempted to lower the landing gear further manually without success. He radioed the other pilot and advised him he was going to have to attempt a landing without full gear extension. He set up for a long final approach to runway 15 with as little airspeed as he considered safe and began the approach. When on very short final approach he retarded the throttle to idle and the mixture to lean and placed the fuel selector to off. Immediately prior to touchdown he switched the master and magnetos to the off position.

When the wheels touched the pavement he could feel the contact and then the gear folded with the plane making contact with the runway. When sufficiently slowed the wing dipped and the aircraft slid off the runway and onto the gravel skirt where the aircraft stopped.

One runway light was destroyed in the sliding event. Upon raising the aircraft a puddle of what appeared to be hydraulic fluid was on the ground immediately below the nose gear wheel well. A cursory inspection showed a failed hydraulic line on the ?retract? Side of the gear cylinder.