On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:34:33 GMT, "Colin W Kingsbury"
wrote:

FWIW, I sympathize with the original logic ("no retractable gear
airplanes"), but this specific application is a bridge too far. How many
gear-down water landings are there in a year? You're effecting a huge
reduction in utility for a pretty marginal reduction in accidents. Sounds
like an issue someone got a bug up their ass about and wrote into the regs.

Especially when you consider that retractable gear is allowed on LSA gliders.
However, the severity of a gear-up accident on land is usually a lot less than
that of a gear-down landing in the water. There was one of those (in a
homebuilt, yet) just last September.

"When the pilot expected to hear the hissing of the water on the hull at the
step, the pilot, instead, saw two columns of water on both sides of the cockpit
shooting straight up. The airplane then violently nosed down into the water and
came to rest inverted and submerged in the lake."

They should have written the rules to allow retracts on amphibs as long as the
aircraft's max speed stays within the bounds.

Ron Wanttaja