How Low to Spin??

Funny, one of the instructors at my club landed gear up...he and his cronies
said the gear collapsed. Seems to me, had the gear collapsed, he would have
had at least some damage to the gear doors or had the ship checked out
afterwards. IMO, he just Skipped the checklist.

Jim Vincent
N483SZ
illspam

Jim Vincent wrote:

Funny, one of the instructors at my club landed gear up...he and his cronies
said the gear collapsed. Seems to me, had the gear collapsed, he would have
had at least some damage to the gear doors or had the ship checked out
afterwards. IMO, he just Skipped the checklist.


I had a gear collapse in a Discus, without any damage to the gear doors.
This was due to both a worn locking mechanism and a bounce on landing,
probably helped by a rabbit hole (we have a lot of them here). The
sailplane was flying again when the gear retracted and so the gear
doors properly closed in the air and the aircraft landed again on the
CG hook. I remember the feeling of something moving in my peripheral
vision field while I was looking on the runway in front of me, of
course when I understood it was the gear handle moving backward, it
was to late.

Funny, one of the instructors at my club landed gear up...he and his cronies
said the gear collapsed. Seems to me, had the gear collapsed, he would have
had at least some damage to the gear doors or had the ship checked out
afterwards. IMO, he just Skipped the checklist.

I'm sure there's more to this than is written above. But in the
absence of any more data, this would accurately describe many LS-1/3/4
landing gear incidents. My old LS-3 gear retracted itself twice on
landing, on grass, with no damage whatsoever. The gas spring in the LS
undercarriage that allows this to happen when it's worn and/or the
outside air temperature is cold and/or there's dirt/friction in the
landing gear mechanism has been discussed at length in this forum.
Experienced owners no longer get anxious when it happens; they just
get angry.

The incident described may, indeed, have been a gear up landing. But
there's nothing definitive in the description to indicate so. Which
makes the term "IMO" particularly apt: it is just one person's
opinion. That's consistent with the tone. Substitute "other
experienced pilots" for "his cronies" and you send an entirely
different message.

Just trying to be fair,
Chip Bearden