Student practices landing with gear up

Bummer,

I had the Arrow reserved with the flight center I use, for next week and for
a couple of days in August.

They just sent me an email stating that a student pilot from the flight
center they share it with, landed it with the gear up. How embarrassing,
especially since the plane has an automatic gear down deployment once it
drops below 100mph and the manifold and rpm resemble a landing
configuration. He/she must have shut it off. It has a loud alarm that sounds
off in that situation, so I don't know what might have happened..

--
Thanks,

Steve

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
you will always long to return"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

steve wrote:
Bummer,

I had the Arrow reserved with the flight center I use, for next week and for
a couple of days in August.

They just sent me an email stating that a student pilot from the flight
center they share it with, landed it with the gear up. How embarrassing,
especially since the plane has an automatic gear down deployment once it
drops below 100mph and the manifold and rpm resemble a landing
configuration. He/she must have shut it off. It has a loud alarm that sounds
off in that situation, so I don't know what might have happened..

--
Thanks,

Steve

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
you will always long to return"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

I think the statement(I can't remember who said it first) goes
something like this, "First rule of thumb when designing fool proof
anything is never to underestimate a fool."

Monk

I thought that auto extend feature had been disabled by a SB on most
Arrows.. maybe only the older ones..
BT

"steve" wrote in message
. ..
Bummer,

I had the Arrow reserved with the flight center I use, for next week and
for a couple of days in August.

They just sent me an email stating that a student pilot from the flight
center they share it with, landed it with the gear up. How embarrassing,
especially since the plane has an automatic gear down deployment once it
drops below 100mph and the manifold and rpm resemble a landing
configuration. He/she must have shut it off. It has a loud alarm that
sounds off in that situation, so I don't know what might have happened..

--
Thanks,

Steve

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
you will always long to return"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

BTIZ wrote:
I thought that auto extend feature had been disabled by a SB on most
Arrows.. maybe only the older ones..
BT


Isn't that the one that had the battle of the SBs? SB says disable it,
SB says reenable it, SB says disable it etc?

"steve" wrote in message
. ..
They just sent me an email stating that a student pilot from the flight
center they share it with, landed it with the gear up. How embarrassing,
especially since the plane has an automatic gear down deployment once it
drops below 100mph and the manifold and rpm resemble a landing
configuration. He/she must have shut it off. It has a loud alarm that
sounds off in that situation, so I don't know what might have happened..

Depending on what else he was doing with the airplane that flight, it might
not be surprising for the automatic deployment to be disabled temporarily
(I'm assuming that since you're familiar with the airplane, you know whether
it's been permanently disabled, and that it hasn't been). It's common to
disable the auto deployment when practicing power-on stalls, for example (so
the gear doesn't drop while you get the airplane slowed down and otherwise
configured for the stall).

As for the warning horn, most retractable gear airplanes are equipped with
gear warning horns, and pilots frequently manage to ignore them. It seems
to me that in many gear-up landings, they are preceded by some sort of
distraction. Something odd about the traffic pattern entry, or having to
extend the pattern, or something along those lines. Of course, when a
distraction happens, the pilot may well find himself having to focus even
more, and this focus can result in not being aware of a warning horn.
Ironic, since that's just when the horn is most needed.

Anyway, I'd say that history has shown us that the airplane features you
mention (auto deply and warning horn) are not 100% effective in preventing
gear-up landings. Too often, the very factors that led to the gear-up
landing in the first place are related to why those features don't wind up
being useful.

Pete

In a previous article, "steve" said:
They just sent me an email stating that a student pilot from the flight
center they share it with, landed it with the gear up. How embarrassing,
especially since the plane has an automatic gear down deployment once it
drops below 100mph and the manifold and rpm resemble a landing
configuration. He/she must have shut it off. It has a loud alarm that sounds
off in that situation, so I don't know what might have happened..

Two possibilities:
- he disabled it when he was doing air work earlier OR
- he landed at 90 knots and half throttle.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
You had me at
print("Hello World\n");

Peter Duniho wrote:

As for the warning horn, most retractable gear airplanes are equipped with
gear warning horns, and pilots frequently manage to ignore them
snip

With regards to my Bonanza, this horn is practically useless as it will
only sound when manifold pressure drops below 12 inches, well below the
green arc on the MP gauge (implying that for the majority of the approach
the horn would be silent).

It is not until power is pulled almost all the way back, which in my case
typically is less than 50 feet above the runway or about a second before
touchdown.


--
Peter

"Peter R." wrote:

It is not until power is pulled almost all the way back, which in my case
typically is less than 50 feet above the runway or about a second before
touchdown.

Sorry, didn't finish my thought he

It is not until power is pulled almost all the way back that MP drops below
12 inches and into warning horn range.

--
Peter

It is not until power is pulled almost all the way back, which in my case
typically is less than 50 feet above the runway or about a second before
touchdown.

You land with a vertical speed of fifty feet per second? I don't think
it matters whether it's gear up or down at that point!

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

It is not until power is pulled almost all the way back, which in my case
typically is less than 50 feet above the runway or about a second before
touchdown.

You land with a vertical speed of fifty feet per second? I don't think
it matters whether it's gear up or down at that point!

LESS than. I guess the tears in your eyes from your uncontrollable
laughter perhaps prevented you from reading that part.

--
Peter