Someone at my home base taxied to the pumps and while refuelling noticed that fuel was pouring out of the bottom of the wing. It turned out that he had contacted something on the ground and the prop tip had gone into the tank!
There’s no way the pilot didn’t notice this. I was once involved in a prop strike on landing (as RHS pax, the nosegear collapsed on rollout), and the sound of the prop blades hitting the tarmac is terrifying.
I seem to recall several reports of prop strikes under power that went unnoticed even with the blades being metal.
A pilot friend of mine made a hard landing in an airplane with a notoriously weak undercarriage (the H36 Hoffmann Dimona) and had the wooden prop shortened by a feet or so on both blades. He swears that he did not notice the strike before shutdown and there was no vibration as he taxied to apron.
But vibrations apart, like some others I find it hard to believe that there would be no noticeable loss of thrust on the DA-42 doing a go-around with the mini-props shown on the photos.
