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six gear collapses & gear ups in one week


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3 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:


Do missiles not have a gear horn? I know the J does.

I have an Icarus SAM GPSS which provides an alerting system. You set your destination airport altitude at takeoff and then it alerts with your choice of "GUMPS" or "Gear" at 1,000 AGL, mine is programmed for GUMPS. I always use it. The one time I had a near gear up I must have ignored it with all the other stuff going on. I find that is not uncommon with my alert system that there is a burst of communication or other activity going on right when that alert sounds, tower wants to talk to me, or another aircraft has come on in the pattern, things you prioritize over the aural alert, which you have heard a thousand times before. That is the problem with any technological warning, gear horn, oral annunciator, you name it. We prioritize it away.

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12 hours ago, Missile=Awesome said:

 How about this for task saturation.  I have related this sad ordeal multiple times on Mooneyspace...

Flew an hour under hood with an instructor that was dating MY instructor that was sleeping in the back of my E.  Returned to CID.  Offloaded boyfriend.  Flying Flight review second hour.  Completed all phases of flight including a simulated engine out.  Returned to unfamiliar airport (Iowa City) with runway 36 (now gone) that had a large displaced area on north end.  Doing touch and go’s.  I am tired as I have now flow two hours with an hour under the hood and another doing slow flight, stalls etc...  Third touch and go as I am turning to downwind instructor pulls power.  Says “what are you going to do”?  I say fly a tight pattern and land after displaced runway. Fly tight base turn to final and she says “beautiful” while I am in the flare...Crunch...Gear up.  i told her to “get out” after shutting off fuel and master as she was sitting there.  She ran away from plane...Wanted me to say I was “alone”.  That was my experience with task saturation...

It was a damn fine flare though ;)

Bought a headset annunciation “Check Gear”! In headset right after the incident.

”It” happens...

I keep telling you guys those touch & goes are bad news...

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4 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:


Do missiles not have a gear horn? I know the J does.

Incident happened >15 years ago in my M20E.  That is kinda my point Art “task saturation” is a REAL thing.  I have zero memory of the gear horn coming on.  This event was take off, retract gear, climbing to pattern, instructor “power pulled to idle”, (as gear is lowered in normal downwind abeam the numbers) focused on flying a tight pattern and avoiding displaced section of runway at idle to touchdown point.  I was definitely “surprised” by simulated emergency injected two hours into training.  Is what it is.  Was what it was.  I didn’t hear no stinkin’ gear horn (in my best Tex-Mex voice)...

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Just now, toto said:

Ugh.  That's a lot of down time.

These threads always make think that Piper was on to something with auto-extend.

I know that there are people who really despise the system, and of course it does add an extra step for some training maneuvers like slow-flight, but sheesh, planes have had foldy gear for a long long time and it seems crazy that each of us is still one small distraction away from a $60k bill and 10 months down.

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I would agree that technology and innovation can play a huge role to reduce these incidents but I think Pipers solution was proven to be too dangerous - given it's killed people on go arounds and in higher DA situations. Personally, I really think solutions like the P2 Audio Advisory system are the right way to attack this.
Only problem though is most pilots are in denial about how easily this happens in the right situations and don't think they need it till after they have done the unbelievable. And in this current insurance market some get a nasty surprise that their insurance won't renew after one of these incidents - which equates to a 3 or more year sentence of insurance hell for them.


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Just got my renewal bill

No accidents ever in 55 years

No losses ever in 55 years

No violations ever in 55 years

22 years in same Mooney (@1800 hrs)

20,000+hrs with 7 Jet Type Ratings

Insurance went up 20% from last year

Only 1 company sent in a quote

Commentary from Ins Industry sent with billing indicating MAX has a lot to do with it as many many underwriters and secondary insurers are selling out to each other and market is shrinking in numbers.

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I just installed a PS Engineering PMA8000G audio panel. It has four alerts that can be triggered by airframe inputs. I have one hooked to my gear warning system, so it will play a message into my headsets if the throttles are retarded and the gear is still up. You can record your own message. So instead of "check gear", you can have it say" hey stupid, you're about to land gear  up", or "INSURANCE HIKE, INSURANCE HIKE", or something else equally fun.

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1 minute ago, toto said:

It certainly wasn't perfect, but I can't help but wonder - if they'd kept the system - how it might have been improved over the last 45 years. 

If modernized... microprocessor controlled...

Could it be useful..?

What would the specifications be?

Sensors, Warnings, overrides, a different result if the engine isn’t producing power...

Odd cases to be considered? 

 

I picture Hal’s voice...  I’m lowering your gear, Dave...  
 

The spooky factor, will be a real wake up call...

Best regards,

-a-

 

 

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15 minutes ago, carusoam said:

Could it be useful..?

I took a checkride in an Arrow 100 years ago, and the FBO had taught me always to disable the system. The examiner got in the plane and saw me flip the disconnect, and he was like: "doesn't it work?" And I said something like "it works, but it's always disconnected." And he said "why would you want to do that?"

And then I muttered something about slow flight or high DA or whatever, and he kept challenging me on it. We departed with the system enabled, and any time it squawked during the ride it became a good talking point.

Anyway, it was an interesting experience. The instructors at the FBO just always disconnected the system. It may have even been an item on their checklist. 

It made me think a lot, on the day and in days since, about safety equipment and pilot proficiency. 

I've never owned a plane with the auto-extend feature, so I don't pretend to be an expert. But it seemed awfully easy to use, and awfully easy to disable if you needed to. When you're planning your slow flight practice or high-DA takeoff, you could simply flip the disconnect switch. But then leave it enabled for the unplanned high-workload arrival where you've gotten overloaded and forgotten something. 

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The gear horn after the Missile modification to a J works exactly the same as it did before the modification just like any other J.

Then I’m having a hard time understanding why people feel they need a verbal warning in addition to the annoying horn.
And how do you get slowed down without putting out the gear?
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2 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:


Then I’m having a hard time understanding why people feel they need a verbal warning in addition to the annoying horn.

 Because distractions happen. My short final "point at the floor indicator" saved me at an unfamiliar airport when Tower sent me 14nm beyond fhe airport, still at 7500 msl and cruise speed, before turning me inbound and clearing me to land #8.

2 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:

And how do you get slowed down without putting out the gear?

 My problem that day was getting the airplane down in time to land, then slowing down. Not sure I was ever on glide slope, and speed was well above gear speed most of those 14nm back to the field. My concentration was split between the altimeter and looking for the runway out the windshield.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/9/2020 at 10:02 AM, philiplane said:

An M20C geared up yesterday in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.

Look at Kathyrn’s report. The same aircraft geared up at Coeur D’Alene in August 2019. The report says the 2019 incident was a gear collapse. http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/12/mooney-m-20c-n5758q-incidents-occurred.html . Owner is an instructor or flight school, maybe students making the mistake?

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9 hours ago, carusoam said:

This video shows at least three GU landings of one plane...

Reminder...  Prop Strike = land now, no go-around...

 

These people did it at full scale compared to a GA plane...

A320

-a-


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_International_Airlines_Flight_8303

Just amazing that a 18,000 hr captain was so satisfied as to ignore repeated warnings from ATC starting at 10,000' that the aircraft was way high all the way down to "When only 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) from the airport, the aircraft was at an altitude of 7,000 feet instead of 3,000 feet (910 m). ATC issued a second instruction to turn to descend. One of the pilots responded again by stating that he was satisfied and able to handle the situation, and that he was prepared for landing." 

Some more interesting extracts from the report:

"Extracts from the cockpit voice recorder suggest the pilots were preoccupied in a non-operational conversation about the COVID-19 pandemic"

"The aircraft was at an altitude of 9,800 at navigation-waypoint MAKLI, whereas it was expected to be at 3,000 ft. The pilots disengaged the autopilot, and switched to "Open Descent" mode, in an effort to capture the ILS glide path, the aircraft momentarily achieved descent rates of over -7000fpm. The landing gear was extended at a height of 7,200 ft when the aircraft was 10 nautical miles away, but the landing gear was inexplicably retracted by the time it came to 5 nautical miles from the runway. It eventually attempted to land without the landing gear extended.

Before the first landing attempt (according to the CVR and FDR), multiple alerts including the over speed and gear unsafe warning, as well as ground proximity warning system (GPWS) all sounded, but were either missed or disregarded by the flight crew."

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2 hours ago, M016576 said:

Apparently hours alone don’t make the pilot.  We’re all only as good as our next flight/landing....

So true! We have a saying in climbing - "you're only as good as your last red-point" which refers to your last flawless climb - not what your working on today at this moment. Its constant struggle to being good in any sport just as its a constant struggle for a pilot to maintain proficiency. Those that rest on there past accomplishments with a sense of "over confidence", as this captain was citied in the report, are in for a rude awakening if they manage to survive it.  

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On 11/20/2020 at 8:38 PM, cliffy said:

Commentary from Ins Industry sent with billing indicating MAX has a lot to do with it as many many underwriters and secondary insurers are selling out to each other and market is shrinking in numbers

Agreed. Risk is shared across the aviation insurance portfolio. It is also true that insurance was lower to stable for a prolonged period of time prior to recent increases.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/13/2020 at 3:27 PM, cliffy said:

I know of one  Mooney that has geared up 3 times and only 1 made to the log book

All 3 by the same pilot. 

Back in the 1980's, I used to check people out in a 1964 Ranger N78888 (loved saying "tripple-8 on the radio) at a club in San Jose. (It's privately owned now and still flying). It had a Johnson bar. It landed gear up at least twice that I'm aware of while in the club (thankfully not by anyone I checked out).

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