Gear Up Landings

[Hank]

19 hours ago, Alan Fox said:

Here is one that works for me , but will be unpopular here , Have the plane fully configured for landing , before entering the pattern...

No thank you. I enter the pattern at pattern speed, Takeoff Flaps, gear up. Gear goes down abeam my intended point of landing, to initiate the descent.

Flaps are adjusted as needed on final to maintain glideslope, while throttle and yoke control altitude and airspeed. 

One last check of the floor indicator on short final:  looking, pointing at and confirming green. Since it's painted on the mechanism, it is always right.

[MooneyMitch]

On 2/20/2020 at 7:15 PM, Alan Fox said:

Here is one that works for me , but will be unpopular here , Have the plane fully configured for landing , before entering the pattern...

For clarification, I generally have the Mooney [M20D/C] gear down and locked, speed approximately 90-100 MPH, and am at pattern altitude when I do enter the traffic pattern.  Again, multiple gear checks prior to touch down.  I say generally because with my life experiences, there are exceptions to most everything.

[Mufflerbearing]

After all the stories and videos of gear up landings, I am super paranoid about doing a gear up landing.  Having a long body, there really is no way to get the speed off to land if the gear is not down.  Recently, I had started to deploy the gear later in the pattern but really struggled to get the speed off before descent to base.  It took me a bit going over in my mind what had changed, and once again, deploying mid field downwind sets things comfortably right.  If something is just not right, think about it.