Cessna gear-up at MMU today (Morristown NJ)

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:11:49 -0800 (PST), Tina
wrote:


Would it be good practice to be sure the doors are unlatched and open
a bit before touchdown in a circumstance like this? I'm concerned
about there being enough warping to bind the doors in place.

"DOORS - Unlatch prior to touchdown" is on the forced-landing no-power
checklist. I was also taught to also prop something in there (like a
book or jacket or something).

"Roger (K8RI)" wrote:
I think you will find you would have to pull up and stall in a rather
steep attitude to get the prop to stop in many planes. In a well
loosened engine on a 150 or 172 it might not stop until well into the
roll out.

On the first maintenance flight after a top overhaul (Varga, Lyc O-320),
pulled the throttle back all the way when entering the flare, and the
engine quit. The prop did not continue spinning, it stopped *instantly*.
It was a non event ... continued the flare and made as nice a landing as
it would have been with the engine at idle. But the instantly-stopped
prop was noticed by the controller who immediately asked if we were
going to need assistance. We didn't ... we easily rolled to the next
exit, then restarted for taxi.

On Dec 11, 6:19 pm, "~^ beancounter ~^" wrote:
yea, i would think the pilot would want to stop, rock the prop and get
it horz b4 belly landing....a few bucks here, a few bucks ther...hey,
b4 too long it add up...no?


Assuming it was a two blade prop, sure. But, that might be a bit much
to ask in the heat of the moment, knowing you're about to hear some
very bad grinding sounds on touchdown. It's probably better to just
ace the landing and not be distracted by the prop. At that point, the
insurance co owns the plane anyway.

I'm not surprised by Shirl's comment of the prop stopping immediately
on a top-overhauled engine. There's a lot more friction due to tight
clearances that haven't opened up yet. Glad to hear it was handled
well though, and turned out to be a non-event.

Kingfish wrote:

Assuming it was a two blade prop, sure. But, that might be a bit much
to ask in the heat of the moment, knowing you're about to hear some
very bad grinding sounds on touchdown. It's probably better to just
ace the landing and not be distracted by the prop. At that point, the
insurance co owns the plane anyway.

IIRC, Avweb once had a column on how trying to save the prop(s) before a
belly landing by shutting off the engine is not a good idea. Their main
points were
- Distracts pilots whose workload is already high enough (which would be
what you wrote)
- Commits you to the landing earlier than necessary: Once you stop the
engine, a go around is out of the question because there probably will not
be enough time for restart. If the rest of the airplane is fine, there's
normally no reason not to retry if something isn't quite right. By stopping
the engine(s), you reduce your options.
- Makes what already is an unusual situation - belly landing - an even more
unusual situation - belly landing combined with engine out landing.
- Some pilots in the past have apparently stopped the engine(s) too early,
then ran out of airspeed/altitude or neglected to monitor the airspeed
probably due to distraction, stalled, and crashed.

They argued that all of these factors point to trying to save the engines on
a gear-up landing being a potentially dangerous practice.