Landing gear-up

yup gear up horn all the way in. Amazing but easiier to do than you'd think.

 

I think it is usually triggered by decaying airspeed. That's how it works in my airplane, anyway.

Until we can translate the French, I guess we won't know if they had a gear extension problem or if they simply ignored the buzzer all the way in. I can't imagine how you can ignore that thing unless you don't know what the heck it is, in which case you should really know more about your airplane!

 

No kidding! Glad it was all-in-all a "safe landing" - I HAVE to think they knew
the gear had a problem and it was an intentional thing.

I posted the video link with a plea for translation up in the French section... will keep an
eye on that post to see if anyone steps forward who can tell us what is being discussed.
(It's probably "Holy Crap! Look at that prop! I wonder how messed up the belly is....)

Jedi

 

Particularly with headphones on. Does any private aircraft route alert horns to the intercom/headphone systems?

Landing gear switch & lights was on my landing checklist 3x, though it really wasn't necessary as my Mooney behaved very differently without gear deployed (didn't want to lose airspeed) so that was a big tipoff.

 

Ah yes, the ol' story . When asked why he landed gear- up, the student pilot said, " That damn horn was blaring so loud I forgot To put the landing gear down."

 

I came so close to doing this that the prop probably was only about an inch from the ground.


Beechcraft Sierra.

I was coming in to PWA in Oklahoma City, there had been an ice storm (runway glare ice all the way) with snow on top of that, and so I asked to fly down the runway to look at it first.

Cleaned up, flew around again - and you can guess what I forgot.

Horn on all the way, until suddenly the tower yelled gear just as I realized I was sinking too low on the flare. Blew out of there, went back around and did it right. Never touched the brakes and never needed them. They maneuver better (at low speed) on black ice than a car.

It really was just that close. Anybody can do it, especially when you are under a little stress.

 

Mine is so loud and annoying it's impossible to miss no matter what is on your head! It often jars the hell out of people when I'm doing slow flight or stalls.

PS -- I'm in no way claiming this could not happen to me. I'm more than sure it could

 

The plane in the video is a Socata TB20. I own and operate one.

There are alarms that are triggered if the landing flaps are deployed with the gear not down, and also if the throttle is retarded without the gear down and locked.

Both alarms can be clearly heard on the video.

Pilot error, sloppy procedures and not carrying out pre-landing checks. Not the end of the world for the aircraft, but an expensive mistake to make.

 

German WW2 General of Luftwaffe Adolph Galland wrote an interesting story about his incident with this in the battle of britain -

ME-109, he had engaged in combat over London, somehow hit the gear switch during the fog, flew back across the coast cursing the plane because it was so slow -

Then, put the gear UP, and was just about to land when everybody on the ground was screaming bloody murder to get him to get the gear down. He heard them at the last moment.

 

Looks like the plane was high coming in on the turn to final.

Pilot does a forward slip halfway down final (left bank, nose right and pointed down).

They were probably 100% focused on the descent angle to make the runway and forgot about the gear and no time to use the checklist.

 

The old saying: "Wheels Down on Go-Around". Rhymes. Read that in a Flying magazine when I was a kid.

 

So is the slip because he was carrying too much altitude and speed even with the flaps down? (Because the Gear was up).

Slip: Do you bank L with R rudder (or vice-versa)?

 

I'll defer to the more experienced pilots on here but here's what I've been taught.

Depends on the direction of the cross-wind, if any.

If there is no or very little x-wind, pilots typically will bank left and point the nose right to forward slip.
Pilot is typically in the left seat so banking left gives the best forward view out the window.

If the x-wind is out of the right side of the plane (blowing to the left), then you bank right and point the nose left.

Key is to put the nose down a little bit to maintian a safe airspeed above the stall speed while slipping.

The idea is to expose the big flat side of the airplane to the oncoming relative wind.
In my Cessna 182, this really increases the descent rate.
Very safe to do, especially if you do it early after turning final.

Here's a youtube clip of a well-controlled slip to lose altitude on final in a Cessna 152.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_f0KnXyExU[/ame]

 

I also came up with a protocol to fly the airplane so that I NEVER heard the gear horn. On some airplanes the gear horn goes off frequently and some pilots end up with a "I'll get to that" kind of mentality and they learn to ignore it. Sorta like the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. I flew the airplane so that if I ever heard it I was really doing something wrong and it would get my attention.

On my 182 RG there was a pitch down change with gear extension and a pitch up change with flaps. What I found was that if you hit the gear lever and immediately hit the first notch of the flaps, by the time the gear was down the flaps had moved and there was almost no pitch change so I didn't have to retrim, and since I didn't have electric trim that took one more task off the table when you are busy and looking around for traffic and everything else. The standard procedure was to do both at the same time, which would make it a lot harder to get the airplane slowed down if you didn't have flaps down...

Also as with the Mooney, without flaps and gear, you would be really booking down final so it would have to get your attention.

 

I agree. But putting the gear is called for when high. That, plus the horn....both adds up to them knowing the gear was up because it wouldn't come down. Looks to me like they knew it was going to be a gear up landing.



I always run 2 landing checklists. The first is the a/c' manufacture's checklist.

But...the more important checklist is the one I've come up with. And it only consists of one item. Make sure the gear's down. That's it. I gotten in the habit of making *my* checklist the only one that has to be done on every landing in every aircraft.

From Cessna 150's to 737's, "Gear down". It's really the only checklist item on any checklist that HAS to be run in any a/c for landing. everything else is nice, but none of it will ruin your day if forgotten.

 

I flew a 172 on my private checkride and when the examiner pulled the power I "picked my field" and when I got close I was obviously high. I grabbed a boot full of rudder and slipped the crap out of it to the point where it was obvious that the field was made. The examiner, said "OK, you've got it made, go around", then he pointed to the flap switch and said "what about this" ..... the placard on the flaps switch that says ..."avoid slips with flaps extended". I said "it says avoid, it doesn't say they are prohibited"..... He just nodded and said "Ok".

After he passed me he mentioned that the reason they say to avoid slips with flaps extended in Cessna's is that you can really feel the buffeting on the upside flap and that beats up the flaps. After a while you will start having rivets on the flaps work loose and your mechanic will either love you because you gave him a lot of work or hate you because it's hard to get in there and rework those rivets. I'm not talking about a short slip or a gentle slip here, I'm talking about a real aggressive slip at higher speeds. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, but 182's have such huge flaps that you really shouldn't have to do much more than put the nose down with full flaps and you can scrub off a lot of energy pretty quickly. If you can hear a significant increase in noise when you are slipping the airplane is telling you something. Learn to stay ahead of the airplane and you shouldn't have to beat up the hardware to be where you want to be.

 

Good point on the potential wear & tear on the flaps.

I agree on using the slip when doing the engine-out drill in a 172.
I always liked to be about 10% too high as I came in lined up on the farm field.
Then, carefully using a little bit of forward slip to get the plane to hit your landing spot (our aiming point was typically just over a farm fence or road).
My instructor would let us get low enough during these drills to know whether we would have made it or not before putting power back into the engine.

When the engine's out, I can get the gliding airplane to come down a little faster a lot better than I can get it to go higher.

 

My first reaction is how amazing that is, but then again, people probably said the same thing about TWA 800, Tenerife, etc.

Quite the video.

 

I learned long ago to always, always, always, check "3 green, landing flaps" on short final. I even do it in fixed gear aircraft!

 

I have flown with many old professional pilots including the famous Ernie Gann. Every one of them ,including my son, Kris, shut everything and everybody out of the conversation and tended to a check list. They touched very item on the list and then performed the operation EVERY TIME THEY SET UP FOR A LANDING. If you said anything during this time, a hand was put over your mouth to silence you. Double checks of the panel info and lights. Both these guys have thousands of hours and I never saw a change in their procedures.
As far as slips are concerned. I flew airplanes...many of them that didn't have flaps...and the slip was a part of the landing process then. Approach high if it's a short field with obstacles like wires and once clear of the obstacle or indications that you have made the field, you dumped it with a sideslip or forward slip, kicked it straight and landed. I have never had a problem getting into any place that was supposed to be a problem. It was SOP and useful in a cross wind. Many time when I was landing on the beach in Florida I would set up out over the water and let the breeze cary me near to the beach and stop it with a slip into the breeze and land. Lots of fun! I still say that it is a case of attitude and discipline.

 

A slip is performed by feeding in opposite rudder to the aileron applied. Left aileron, right rudder; right aileron left rudder. It increases the " glide slope" without increasing airspeed and with modulation you can maintain runway heading.

 

Don't forget there are two types of slips: forward slips and side slips. Both are performed basically the same way but are used for different outcomes.

 

It felt like a really steep approach and they seemed so intent in the video that I was sure they were tending to an emergency and ignoring the alarms because they were aware that the landing gear was inoperative. However, after they remove the headsets, it's obvious that they merely forgot to lower it. First thing guy on the right says is "Merde"...that's onion-muncher-speak for "****".

Then, they mutter and mumble as they examine the damaged prop, and the guy in the black jacket says to the other guy "You were so preoccupied with flying the plane, and me, I couldn't"--don't know if it's because he doesn't know how, or because he couldn't reach the controls. Inclined to think he didn't know how, as he would have reminded the other guy if he had remembered.

Then something about it being unrepairable (I think) as he turns the blades--poor guy looks quite shell-shocked. Finally, other voices can be heard--presumably people coming by to help or gawk. Bonjours all around.

Wonder if there's a market for skid plates for small aircraft with retractable gear. And for attachment points where you could attach bars with small wheels and then lever the wheels underneath and lock them in place so as to raise the plane off the ground and allow it to be rolled off the runway.

Man, that's gotta really suck.