We have been told by our CFI not to do it the way Bob
suggests, although we have used this technique on other
gliders. I guess the reason is that the two wheeler
type main wheel sticks out an awfully long way, so
you may not be able to lift the tail high enough. Alternatively
it may risk damaging the nose or the tailboom.

If the undercarriage had been properly designed from
an engineering and ergonomic point of view, this procedure
wouldn't be necessary anyway! BTW the glider comes
with a gear up warning as standard, but quite a few
people (including me) have failed to lock the undercarriage
down properly, even with the warning going off. I thought
that a microswitch must have failed because the U/C
sounded as if it had locked down and the lever appeared
to be fully forward.

Derek Copeland

At 04:24 28 April 2007, Bob Whelan wrote:
At 01:18 24 April 2007, Jack wrote:

Derek Copeland wrote:


Getting a big group of people together to lift a stranded
DG1000 off the ground after an U/C collapse, so that
the wheel can be lowered, has almost become a routine
occurrence at our club!

How do you go about this, in detail?


You ask them very politely! You get some of them to
squat under the mainspar and stand up at the appropriate
moment while others lift on the leading edges of the
wings. One person is required to operate the U/C lever.
The turbo version is significantly heavier to lift.

An Archimedean approach requiring fewer, weaker people
might be to
simply 'walk up' the fuselage from below, levering
about the ship's
changing nose pivot point, until the gear can be lowered.
Works with 15
meter ships. Protect the nose, of course. Not an
original idea. YMMV.

Regards,
Bob Whelan