"gatt" wrote in message
...

Yesterday, according to the news, a pilot and his grandson walked away
from a crashed Lancair after it had an electrical failure on takeoff and
made a gear-up crash landing.

Question: Do Lancairs not have a hydraulic dump or something to lower
the gear in the event of such a failure?

What type of Lancair? If the certified Columbia, they must. From FAR
23.729:

(c) Emergency operation. For a landplane having retractable

landing gear that cannot be extended manually, there must be

means to extend the landing gear in the event of either—

(1) Any reasonably probable failure in the normal landing gear

operation system; or

(2) Any reasonably probable failure in a power source that

would prevent the operation of the normal landing gear

operation system


Since an electrical failure would be a "reasonably probably failure in a
power source...", a Columbia must have some sort of backup gear operation
system.

I'm less sure of how the experimental rules work, but I wouldn't be
surprised if one still needs some sort of backup operation system for the
gear, even for amateur-built experimentals.

Pete