Howdy!

In article ,
David Cartwright wrote:
"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
I was with a student in one of our club Arrows. We put the gear down
and got green lights for the 2 mains, but not for the nose.
We told the tower what was going on and requested a low pass so they
could look under the plane to see what was there. Tower reported all
three gear appeared to be down, so I just landed as gently as I could.
I was relieved when everything held together.
What would you have done? Would you have cycled the gear hoping to fix
the problem, or would you have accepted the possible unlocked nosegear
in exchange for the known locked mains?

I'd have made the same decision as you - stick with what seems to be a
pretty good situation (instead of risking cycling the gear and ending up
worse off), get the tower to have a shufti at your dangly bits, and on
receiving a promising report from them, attempt a gentle approach, holding
the nose off for as long as is practical.

The only thing I'd be tempted to do in addition, assuming your airfield is
big enough, you're experienced enough, and there's enough time to make it a
reasonably safe manoeuvre, is to make a power-off, glide landing, and to get
the second pair of hands in the cockpit (in this case your student) to crank
the propeller with the starter so it's roughly horizontal and thus won't
bash the runway. A prop strike will generally shock-load the engine and
necessitate a complete strip down.

....so you'd voluntarily turn a routine landing into a dead-stick landing?
Including the fun part of getting the prop to stop?

As long as the fan is keeping the pilot cool, why give it up?

This said, the usual rules apply: if in doubt, take the approach that is
most likely to get you walk away from the "landing", and if that means
shock-loading the engine, so be it.

The big doubt above is getting the prop actually stopped while leaving
yourself in a position to make a reasonalbe approach and landing.

yours,
Michael


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Michael and MJ Houghton | Herveus d'Ormonde and Megan O'Donnelly
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Bowie, MD, USA | Tablet and Inkle bands, and other stuff
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