20240324003929I

On 24 March 2024, at approximately 1400 an incident occurred during landing at Hayward Executive Airport. Information zulu was active reported winds 290 at 16 gusting 24. The tower controller asked for me to report at the visual reporting point California state. I loaded a visual approach runway 28R on the G1000. Upon reaching California state the tower controller instructed me to enter right base runway 28R. I was initially a little high on the approach but descended to be on the glidepath. At 90 knots the gusting and turbulent conditions made the stall horn blip occasionally, which would be unusual in calmer conditions, and I became aware of the gusting and turbulent conditions that made the stall horn blip. The angle of attack indicator in the plane was showing a low angle of attack and occasionally jumped to a high angle of attack, which is closer to a stall, due to the gusty conditions. At approximately 500 feet MSL the wind on the G1000 showed a headwind component of 24 knots and a crosswind component of 1 knot. The approach speed is 75 knots, but I reduced airspeed to 80 knots to provide some higher margin for the wind. I remained on the glidepath, and the landing height sensor read back the usual 200, 100, 30, 10, 5 as I continued to manage airspeed for the glidepath and the wind. At about five feet above the ground the airplane descended more rapidly. Fearing a stall, I lowered the nose of the airplane, but it was probably too late and may even have caused damage to the nose gear when it came down too rapidly. It was a hard landing, but not excessively so. About two second after landing, I knew that something was not right. There was a whirring sound, and I tried to identify where it was coming from. I was slowing down as quickly as I was used to, but the brakes seemed less responsive. After I turned off the runway, the tower controller advised me that the nose landing gear was not fully extended and there was smoke coming from the front. I let him know that I believed it to be my brakes and tried to release and again depress the brakes. He told me to hold position. After I had shut the engine down, I noticed that there had been a prop strike due to a collapsed nosewheel. The gusty conditions were unusual in my experience after flying out of Hayward for almost two years now. No cold front was passing through and yet the conditions were similar to when a cold front passes through. The reported winds may have been accurate in a horizontal direction, but I could not foresee the unusual movement of turbulence in a vertical direction that combined with the gusts to create conditions that were quite challenging. If I had experienced them before, I would have had the added benefit of seeing how the angle of attack indicator was behaving. I would have executed a go-around at 500 feet and asked for runway 28L. I believe that I could have made a successful landing on runway 28L because the wider and longer runway would have given me confidence to land at a higher airspeed.