Narrative:

Incident occurred during landing runway xx at ZZZ. Aircraft was an american champion citabria 7ECA tail wheel airplane. A wheel landing was being made during which a slight bounce occurred immediately after which I added a small amount of power to increase lift to arrest the bounce. When the main landing gear settled back onto the runway; I moved the stick forward slightly (i.e.; elevator down) to create a negative angle-of-attack on the wing to kill any remaining lift. This action kept the main gear on the runway without any more bouncing. At this point I could see the airplane was starting to drift over to the side of the runway and I began to apply brakes to slow down. While applying brakes; the airplane ran over a patch of ice and immediately after clearing the ice and back onto dry pavement the brakes grabbed; the tail of the airplane already in the air for a tail wheel landing; started going up with the resulting action being the nose going down. The prop struck the pavement twice (once each prop tip) at which point the spinner contacted the ground; the engine stopped; and the airplane skidded to a stop; approximately 50 ft (distance is estimated; no actual measurement was ever taken). Engine tear-down revealed the crankshaft was slightly bent but still within tolerance. The engine mount and the fire wall were not damaged. Consideration should be given to a design aspect of this particular airplane model that may have been a contributing factor. This airplane has heel brakes. Heel brakes are more awkward to operate than toe brakes. At the point in the sequence of events of this incident that I realized the tail was coming up; the weight vector of my body suddenly changed from the normal seated position to much of my weight being supported by and centered on the airplane's heel brakes making it impossible for me to get off the brakes to let the tail return to either a horizontal attitude as in a normal wheel landing or what I really wanted; was to allow the tail to settle down to the runway surface and assume a 3-point landing attitude. Toe brakes would have made it possible to react faster than with the heel brakes as installed in this airplane. One final thought; my total tail wheel flight time is only 40 hours which has been spread out over literally 17 years. My objective was; and still is; to become proficient in tail wheel airplanes so I may provide tail wheel flight instruction. We have a very large number of tail wheel airplanes in this state with a correspondingly high number of tail wheel accidents. My genuine intent was and still is to help improve tail wheel pilot safety one pilot at a time here in my state. While I realize that part of the cause of this incident was a lack of experience and judgement on my part; if I'm given the opportunity to fly any airplane with heel brakes again in the future I will definitely pass. I think heel brakes are a bad design and while not the primary cause of this incident; I believe it was definitely a contributing factor.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Citabria pilot experienced a prop strike on landing when the aircraft tipped forward because of excessive brake application. The Reporter cited the heel brake design as a contributing factor.

Narrative: Incident occurred during landing Runway XX at ZZZ. Aircraft was an American Champion Citabria 7ECA tail wheel airplane. A wheel landing was being made during which a slight bounce occurred immediately after which I added a small amount of power to increase lift to arrest the bounce. When the main landing gear settled back onto the runway; I moved the stick forward slightly (i.e.; elevator down) to create a negative angle-of-attack on the wing to kill any remaining lift. This action kept the main gear on the runway without any more bouncing. At this point I could see the airplane was starting to drift over to the side of the runway and I began to apply brakes to slow down. While applying brakes; the airplane ran over a patch of ice and immediately after clearing the ice and back onto dry pavement the brakes grabbed; the tail of the airplane already in the air for a tail wheel landing; started going up with the resulting action being the nose going down. The prop struck the pavement twice (once each prop tip) at which point the spinner contacted the ground; the engine stopped; and the airplane skidded to a stop; approximately 50 FT (distance is estimated; no actual measurement was ever taken). Engine tear-down revealed the crankshaft was slightly bent but still within tolerance. The engine mount and the fire wall were not damaged. Consideration should be given to a design aspect of this particular airplane model that may have been a contributing factor. This airplane has heel brakes. Heel brakes are more awkward to operate than toe brakes. At the point in the sequence of events of this incident that I realized the tail was coming up; the weight vector of my body suddenly changed from the normal seated position to much of my weight being supported by and centered on the airplane's heel brakes making it impossible for me to get off the brakes to let the tail return to either a horizontal attitude as in a normal wheel landing or what I really wanted; was to allow the tail to settle down to the runway surface and assume a 3-point landing attitude. Toe brakes would have made it possible to react faster than with the heel brakes as installed in this airplane. One final thought; my total tail wheel flight time is only 40 hours which has been spread out over literally 17 years. My objective was; and still is; to become proficient in tail wheel airplanes so I may provide tail wheel flight instruction. We have a very large number of tail wheel airplanes in this state with a correspondingly high number of tail wheel accidents. My genuine intent was and still is to help improve tail wheel pilot safety one pilot at a time here in my state. While I realize that part of the cause of this incident was a lack of experience and judgement on my part; if I'm given the opportunity to fly any airplane with heel brakes again in the future I will definitely pass. I think heel brakes are a bad design and while not the primary cause of this incident; I believe it was definitely a contributing factor.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.