Gear Warning

W.J. (Bill) Dean (U.K.). wrote:

I understand that frequently if someone lands wheel up, when asked if they
did pre-landing checks they say "oh, yes!". The point of course is that
those who are taught pre-landing checks are flying training gliders with a
fixed wheel, and so they are used to saying the check item but doing
nothing.

Perhaps, if they had a gear up warning system, it would have alerted
them to the put the gear down, and avoided the gear up landing. I find
having the buzzer screech at me is a good training aid, and I redouble
my efforts to avoid it in the future.

The people I know that have landed gear up had 100's (or more) of hours
in the glider they landed gear up, so it seems they were used to "doing
something". The gear up landings I'm familiar with almost always
involved some distraction so that the checks were not done, or the pilot
grabbed the wrong handle, or the gear was down for the whole flight and
raised for landing. Also, the pre-landing checks I was taught did not
involve the gear, flaps, or ballast, as the ASK 13 had none of these,
and I suspect many (most?) US pilots were trained that way. All this
leads me to believe the situation you suggest is a rare one.

Personally, the 3 times my gear up warning saved me, I had 200, 1000,
and 1500 hours in various retractable gear gliders. All involved
distraction.


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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:

The gear up landings I'm familiar with almost always
involved some distraction so that the checks were not done,

I did my first and (yet) only gear up landing, luckily on grass, with
300 hours, most of them with retractable gear. I know exactly why this
happened: I was on a cross country in an unknown region and had to
outland on a controlled airport. I knew the airport had a grass and a
concrete runway, but wasn't there before and I wasn't prepared to land
there. The runway couldn't be seen during the approach, but only on
downwind. So I had first to decide that I had to land there, then study
the airport chart, talk to them, enter the controlled airspace, follow
their instructions, navigate in an unknown place with an "invisible"
runway, look out for that runway etc., which all broke my routine. I
always do my checks on a certain point during the approach sequence. But
that sequence was broken and additional workload was introduced, and
that got me. I've reviewed my routine since.

Stefan

My one gear warning save happened while doing touch and goes with my Mooney.
Neglected to raise the gear on take-off, then abeam the numbers, flipped the
gear switch up. Briefly wondered why that darn distracting beep-beep-beep
thing was making such a racket. Within a second or two, came to my senses
and exclaiming to myself, "Holy Bananas" (or some similar, equally
appropriate thing). Switch down, no damage, glad there's a gear warning horn
even though I'm originally a Brit'.

bumper