Here's the scoop on the little "landing incident" I experienced yesterday.
During one flight, when I was doing a touch-n-go, I came in smooth on the mains, let the nose gear settle down, and about the time I was going to rotate again, I saw the airplane give a little shudder, and heard a noise similar to when a prop strkies the ground. I discounted that since the props are so far above the ground. I immediately cut power to idle and let the plane come to a stop, then taxied back to my end of the flight line. Several of us went out, and inspected the plane for any apparent damage, or what could have caused the shudder and noise it experienced. Finding no visible damage, engines running fine, etc, I attributed the shudder to a hole in the runway that the nose gear may have dropped into. I have a spring on the nose gear and when you take off or land, you can hear it kind of clatter when it bottoms out. The holes in our runway are coming either from Canadian Geese or skunks that are digging these silver dollar size holes about an inch or so deep, apparently looking for bugs or something. Anyway, I took off again and made a couple laps and landed uneventfully, still wondering what that noise was that we had heard. After I put the plane on the table, I was looking it over and discovered the "ding" on the fuselage side, obviously from a prop strike from the port inboard engine. It is a slice which went though the fuselage, although just barely.
Here's the kicker. There is between 5/8 and 3/4" clearance from the prop tip to the fuselage. None of us could do anything to the wing or fuse short of breaking something that would get the prop anywhere near the fuselage. There's apparently some strange forces going on during landing and take off. I can't believe that for the wing to twist that far it didn't break the 1/4-20 nylon wing bolts. Strange.
Anyway, the bird is in the hanger and is getting a complete going over before it flies again. I just can't believe that something isn't broken somewhere that I haven't found yet.
Randy