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I was up with a student in a 177RG practicing touch and go's. There was a small crosswind, but the wind was gusting kind of funny. It would be pretty calm and then all of a sudden, there would be a decent gust, then calm again for a couple of minutes. On about our 6th touch and go, we caught a gust from the side right at touchdown and ended up with a decent sideload. The landing no longer looked doable, so we went around. After rotation, my student told me that he thought he saw something fly off the gear on his side. I took control of the aircraft and decided not to retract the gear. The gear on my side looked fine, but my student kept wavering between 'the gear looks fine' and 'it looks a little funny' for the gear on his side. I told tower that this next one would be full stop and kept the left wheel off the runway as long as possible. The landing was pretty smooth and as we were slowing down, I said, "Looks like it's ok." As soon as I said that, I heard a grinding sound and the aircraft started veering to the left. We were only going about 30 kts when the grinding started. I told tower that we were having a problem with one of our tires and might not make it to the taxiway. I probably could have used the engine to pull us there, but I didn't want to worsen the damage. We ended up going into the grass on the side of the runway.
After shutting down, I told the tower that we were going to need some assistance to move the aircraft and they told me that they had already called my flight school. What I didn't know was that they told my boss that the landing gear had collapsed and the aircraft was sitting on its belly (which it wasn't). Apparantly, he was pretty freaked until he got to the plane and saw that it was just the tire and rim (had a small chunk missing from it). Tower closed the runway for a 1/2 hour (multiple runways at the airport, so no problem) while the mechanic put a spare wheel on it and then towed it off.
All in all, I think I did everything right and my boss didn't seem too concerned about it (I'm a new CFI, so I was a little nervous about that).
BTW, the airport truck did a FOD check before opening the runway and did find a piece of the rim.
After shutting down, I told the tower that we were going to need some assistance to move the aircraft and they told me that they had already called my flight school. What I didn't know was that they told my boss that the landing gear had collapsed and the aircraft was sitting on its belly (which it wasn't). Apparantly, he was pretty freaked until he got to the plane and saw that it was just the tire and rim (had a small chunk missing from it). Tower closed the runway for a 1/2 hour (multiple runways at the airport, so no problem) while the mechanic put a spare wheel on it and then towed it off.
All in all, I think I did everything right and my boss didn't seem too concerned about it (I'm a new CFI, so I was a little nervous about that).
BTW, the airport truck did a FOD check before opening the runway and did find a piece of the rim.
