Sacrificial layer for gear-up protection.

On Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 8:35:11 AM UTC-6, Papa3 wrote:
On Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 12:15:59 AM UTC-4, wrote:
I have always wondered, why do people get so worked up about gear up landings in a glider ?

Has anyone ever been killed or seriously injured because of a gear up landing in a glider ?

I have seen several gear up landings and none of them caused any injury and only minor damage.

What's the big deal ?

Todd Smith
3S

I've seen someone seriously injured when a pilot was distracted by a radio call on short final (Glider AB, check your gear). The gear was in fact up, but the pilot momentarily lost control of the glider trying to lower it and hit a spectator, seriously injuring that innocent bystander. It would've been far preferable to land gear up. I also know also of a pilot who was distracted on short final by an erroneous call from the ground. In fact, his gear was down and he dealt with it just fine, but it could easily have been a bad outcome.

Anyway, in several thousand glider takeoffs and landings, I've managed to land gear up twice. In both cases, I was extremely current, well-trained, and considered by my peers to be a good pilot. In one of those, I had a working gear warning which I managed to ignore until after the glider settled ("oh, that's what that annoying noise was"). Point being, those who sit on their pedestal and claim that only under-trained or careless pilots land gear up might want to to reconsider their stance. I know of several other very good pilots who have suffered the same fate.

Long-winded intro to the real question which is... yeah, if a strip of bonded sacraficial material works, great. I would point out that one of the real problems is that, with any sort of hard hit, the damage isn't just to the gelcoat. You have to inspect whatever bulkheads and seams are are bonded at the belly. I know of a relatively minor gear up that resulted in a fairly tricky repair on an LS glider.

P3

I've always presumed that real aviators can fly their aircraft and listen to the radio at the same time. If a "check gear" call rattles a pilot so that he loses control of the glider, there's a problem afoot much more serious than radio procedures.