wrote:
Having the landing gear attached to the wing spar has advantages and
disadvantages, mostly the later. In this month's Light Plane
Maintainence, there is an article about an Arrow owner trying to locate
the source of a vibration. He looks everywhere for something loose, but
all he finds is a crack all the way through the spar carry through
under the pilot seat. Probably caused by a hard landing it says. I bet
if alot of low wing owners looked close enough, many would find bad
news. Musketeers are notorious for cracks at the gear attach point to
the wing. If you hard land a Cessna, all you bend is secondary
structure that doesn't affect in flight strength of the wing, in case
you get caught in bad turbulence. The hands down strongest GA singles
are Mooneys. In over 50 years of metal wing Mooneys, there has been
only 1 in flight failure of a Mooney wing and that was about 5 years
ago when someone tangled with a Tstorm over the Sierras. The structural
engineer who designed the Mooney was Ralph Harmon, the same guy who did
the Bonanza. He over designed the Mooney because of all the friends he
lost due to in flight breakups of early Bo's, which had been designed
with minimum weight in mind.

All true, and I'm a Mooney owner ('81 M20J) and fan. In fairness,
though, I think it's important to point out that the Mooney structure is
steel instead of aluminum, and therefore more vulnerable to moisture
related corrosion.

DGB