"Luke Skywalker" wrote:
about two years ago I gave a pilot a BFR and an insurance renewal
checkout in his Saratoga. He was a fairly "active" (180 hours in the
last year) pilot including some reasonable instrument time. I asked
him "Had any concerns" and he self confessed that he had "almost"
landed gear up at least four times in the last six months.

!!!!!

Jeez!

In 7 years and 900+ hours of flying a retract, I never came close once.



It didnt take "to long" flying with him to see why. We did six
different approaches and EACH time with no real variation in traffic
he put the gear down at a "different time" in the approach. Sometimes
downwind, sometimes final, in the two instrument approaches, it was
never the same place.

When we met for our next session...I took him to the parking lot of
the local walmart which is on the approach path to a busy metropolitan
airport. We did nothing for 20 minutes but sit and watch the
jetliners approach. his task was to figure out what was the same with
all of them. The answer is that they all put the gear down at the
walmart, and all the 737's went to gear down and flaps 15 right around
the Walmart.

The concept of putting the gear down at the same place at the same
time, had never really been taught to this guy, indeed the concept of
"everything is the same on every landing" was a kind of foreign
concept.

Look at every gear up landing (absent mechanical problems) and I will
show you a pilot whose methodology and procedure skills are non
existant.

If you dont have those and one flies a complex airplane...one is an
accident waiting to happen.

No argument there. You're preaching to the choir.

--
Dan
? at BFM