landing gear retraction in sel

On Sat, 9 Feb 2008 15:58:05 -0800 (PST), Tina
wrote:

OK, our way is like this, It's a Mooney, and the gear comes up in
visual conditions at about 100 feet agl or when there's not enough
runway ahead to land. In hard IMC it's sometime after the transition
to instrument controlled flight if the ceiling is pretty low. We've
looked thru a bunch of complex SEL NTSB findings, haven't found
anything that suggests we're missing something that causes accidents
(other than staying on the ground and NOT driving to the airport)..

Is there a better way?

I'm not sure what your question is.

Manual or electric gear?

With the J-Bar (I used to fly a Ranger with manual gear), the only caveat
is to be at a slow enough speed during gear retraction so as to make gear
retraction physically undemanding (puts less stress on the mechanism,
also).

I now fly an M20E with electric gear and have had about 2500 hrs in this
airplane. I raise the gear no earlier than "no usable runway ahead" and no
later than Vy. If I had manual gear, I'd probably raise it during the
transition between Vx to Vy, but I haven't flown a manual gear Mooney in
many years.

IFR vs VFR is not an issue (for me). The gear retraction is quick and the
flying characteristics don't change noticeably during the process.
--ron