Comanche accident averted last evening

"Ron Natalie" wrote in message
...
Highflyer wrote:

No. You can if you want to though! :-) I used to fly a Seabee. You
want the gear UP for a water landing and the gear DOWN for a runway
landing. I used to announce "This is a WATER landing. The landing gear
is UP" and then look out my window at the gear and look at it and then
say "My landing gear is UP." For a land landing I would make suitable
adjustments. Sometimes passengers looked at me funny, but I never landed
with the gear in the wrong position! :-)
In the seabee it's a bigger deal to land gear down in the water than
gear up on the land. Just a little scraping and difficulty with taxi.



That is very true. Any amphibian, even amphibious floats, when landed on
water with the wheels down will generally make for a real "slam dunk" and
the airplane will do its best to emulate a submarine.

Any amphibian, landing on land with the wheels up, will generally scrape a
bit off the keels and scratch a little paint if you land on pavement and
likely won't do a thing if you land on grass.

We used to land airplanes on straight floats on the grass every fall to
change them over to wheels or skis for the winter. In the spring we would
put the floats back on and take off either with a dolly that stayed on the
runway, or off of wet grass!

Highflyer
Highflight Aviation Services
Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )

Towers at military fields issue a "check gear down" instruction along
with the landing clearance... I always thought that would be a good
idea for GA also.

There's a field in Southern California (Burbank? Van Nuys?) that has
the word "Wheels" painted near the numbers at the approach end.

Jose
r.a.student retained, though I don't follow the group
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

kontiki wrote:

Towers at military fields issue a "check gear down" instruction along
with the landing clearance... I always thought that would be a good
idea for GA also.

Yes, even if you have fixed gear. I landed at Springfield, OH many
years ago and got that admonition with my clearance. I resisted the
urge to reply with the old "down and welded" cliche. Now that I fly a
retract, I agree it wouldn't be a bad idea at all for GA.


Matt

I did a check ride in a 172 this week in Honolulu and when we went over to
another airport to do a couple touch and goes they said the gear down thing.
I thought it was odd.
"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Towers at military fields issue a "check gear down" instruction along
with the landing clearance... I always thought that would be a good
idea for GA also.

It usually takes a while to get a Comanche slowed down enough so extending
the gear is more of a necessity. I usually keep my speed up pretty well
until closing in on the field which practically forces me to reach for the
gear lever to get slowed down enough. But things such as long straight in
approaches, or getting slowed down further out can lull you into a sense
of comfort. There's just no substitute for doing the GUMPS check
religiously.

Nothing worse than that sinking feeling just before you hear the
tortured sound of metal on the runway. Then discovering you have to use
full power to taxi......
I've made it a habit to do a "short final Checklist"...levers forward,
gear down and locked. It has saved me from that embarassing sinking
feeling a couple times while distracted on short final.
Ol S&B

wrote:

Then discovering you have to use
full power to taxi......

When I first checked out in a retract, I kept having these nightmarish
thoughts "did I remember to lower the gear". This was usually as I was
driving away from the airport.

I mentioned this once to a fellow club member that's also a CFI, and he
responded with "did you need full power to taxi?".

I've no idea why, but I find this incredibly funny.

- Andrew

On 2005-04-07, Andrew Gideon wrote:
When I first checked out in a retract, I kept having these nightmarish
thoughts "did I remember to lower the gear". This was usually as I was
driving away from the airport.

Same here. That nonsensical pang of "did I land gear up???" 10 minutes
after you've pushed the plane into the hangar is very odd.

I'm amazed that people manage to land Comanches gear up. Vle is higher
than Vfe and if you don't use the gear to slow down to flap speed you
have to pull off a lot more power. Every time I've ever gotten my
configuration wrong (during IFR training, for example) the fact that my
performance isn't what I expected led me to figure out what was wrong.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

wrote in message
ups.com...
Nothing worse than that sinking feeling just before you hear the
tortured sound of metal on the runway. Then discovering you have to use
full power to taxi......
I've made it a habit to do a "short final Checklist"...levers forward,
gear down and locked. It has saved me from that embarassing sinking
feeling a couple times while distracted on short final.

Ol S&B


I remember many years ago we had a Bonanza land. He was going to retract
the flaps on rollout and hit the gear switch instead. Then a bump in the
runway lifted him off the "squat switch" and the gear instantly retracted
putting him on his belly.

We notified the FAA and they send an inspector down from the GADO ( now
FSDO ). He flew over to our airport in one of the FAA's light twins. And
proceeded to land gear up! We gave him a bad time about having to send
another inspector down to investigate HIS gear up landing! He was a mite
embarassed. :-)

Highflyer
Highflight Aviation Services
Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )





Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )

Highflyer
The story about 'Water Landing" is about the same checklist when I was
doing SES instruction in a LA-4. I laughed at the section on insurance
forms when it says, Have you ever made a gear up landing? and my reply
was "Yes, hundreds of times."
Had a GADO inspector (does that tell you how long back that was?) come
in to inspect a minor crop dusting crash (mine). The stud duck came
into our strip with a Bonanza. Landed OK. It was a 1200' grass strip.
When he left, he taxied to the end of a one way strip and began the
take off. I ran out and waved my arms in a vigorous fashion and he
aborted the takeoff. I pointed at the powerlines and he smiled in a
bashful fashion and took off the opposite direction. The inspector who
came in next was in a Citabria and landed over the powerlines, then
proceeded to flip the airplane upside down! We never got much heat from
the GADO after that..... was in 1968, SHV GADO so they are long gone.
Ol S&B
Highflyer wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
Nothing worse than that sinking feeling just before you hear the
tortured sound of metal on the runway. Then discovering you have to
use
full power to taxi......
I've made it a habit to do a "short final Checklist"...levers
forward,
gear down and locked. It has saved me from that embarassing sinking
feeling a couple times while distracted on short final.

Ol S&B


I remember many years ago we had a Bonanza land. He was going to
retract
the flaps on rollout and hit the gear switch instead. Then a bump in
the
runway lifted him off the "squat switch" and the gear instantly
retracted
putting him on his belly.

We notified the FAA and they send an inspector down from the GADO (
now
FSDO ). He flew over to our airport in one of the FAA's light twins.
And
proceeded to land gear up! We gave him a bad time about having to
send
another inspector down to investigate HIS gear up landing! He was a
mite
embarassed. :-)

Highflyer
Highflight Aviation Services
Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )





Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )

wrote in message
oups.com...
Highflyer
The story about 'Water Landing" is about the same checklist when I was
doing SES instruction in a LA-4. I laughed at the section on insurance
forms when it says, Have you ever made a gear up landing? and my reply
was "Yes, hundreds of times."
Had a GADO inspector (does that tell you how long back that was?) come
in to inspect a minor crop dusting crash (mine). The stud duck came
into our strip with a Bonanza. Landed OK. It was a 1200' grass strip.
When he left, he taxied to the end of a one way strip and began the
take off. I ran out and waved my arms in a vigorous fashion and he
aborted the takeoff. I pointed at the powerlines and he smiled in a
bashful fashion and took off the opposite direction. The inspector who
came in next was in a Citabria and landed over the powerlines, then
proceeded to flip the airplane upside down! We never got much heat from
the GADO after that..... was in 1968, SHV GADO so they are long gone.
Ol S&B

I bought that Seabee from a guy who kept it on Lake Bistaneau. I traded him
a Stits Playmate for it.

I taught myself how to fly instruments with no gyros one morning coming out
of Marshall, Texas when I flew into a fog bank that was kind of hidden in
the trees at the end of the runway. It gets your attention when you have NO
instruments and you get whited out at 50 feet AGL. It makes a good hangar
flying story! You CAN keep the wings level with nothing but a magnetic
compass in you know your airplane and are heading south! :-)

Highflyer
Highflight Aviation Services
Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )