Upon landing structural failure of nose gear resulted in a ground strike.

Attributes
ACN	1340643
Time
Date	201603
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Amateur/Home Built/Experimental
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Landing
Route In Use	None
Flight Plan	None
Component
Aircraft Component	Nose Gear
Person 1
Function	Single Pilot Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Commercial Flight Crew Instrument
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 2 Flight Crew Total 2500 Flight Crew Type 1934
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe Ground Event / Encounter Ground Strike - Aircraft

Narrative:

I made a normal approach and landing. During roll out the weld between the nose gear strut and the nose gear fork broke. The nose wheel went forward under the cowl. The aircraft slid to a stop on the nose gear strut. The right wing tip contacted the runway during the deceleration. The NTSB was sent pictures and determined this was an incident.this problem has happened to several other zenithair ch 801 aircraft. If I had performed more than a visual inspection at the last condition inspection I may have been able to detect the crack prior to failure. Or I could have increased the strength of this connection which would have prevented this incident. In looking at the broken weld some of the weld had failed earlier and was rusty.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Upon landing structural failure of nose gear resulted in a ground strike.

Narrative: I made a normal approach and landing. During roll out the weld between the nose gear strut and the nose gear fork broke. The nose wheel went forward under the cowl. The aircraft slid to a stop on the nose gear strut. The right wing tip contacted the runway during the deceleration. The NTSB was sent pictures and determined this was an incident.This problem has happened to several other Zenithair CH 801 aircraft. If I had performed more than a visual inspection at the last condition inspection I may have been able to detect the crack prior to failure. Or I could have increased the strength of this connection which would have prevented this incident. In looking at the broken weld some of the weld had failed earlier and was rusty.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.