Expectation Bias and avoiding gear up landings

[KB4]

9 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

I wonder how delivery pilots switch tanks when mid Atlantic and no airport in sight?

Clarence

Useless comments don’t help keep the community safe. Find exceptions to more constructive things. We can all find them too 

[EricJ]

22 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

Polish the lens and install an LED replacement for the GE330/327.

Clarence

I've been meaning to for a long time, but whenever the belly is off it's for some other reason and I forget and it doesn't get done.   The light that's there does work.

[ArtVandelay]

I like to know how the pilots are slowing down without the gear being extended?

[carusoam]

23 minutes ago, KB4 said:

Useless comments don’t help keep the community safe. Find exceptions to more constructive things. We can all find them too 

Hmmmmm….

Right in the middle of a discussion about human brain failure…

You have gone on what looks like an attack of the one guy who knows repair of GU landings as well as anyone on the planet….

Maybe he isn’t the funniest comedian on MS… 

But his endless supply of high end maintenance insight kind of balances things out… don’t you think?

When it comes to safety info… the M20Doc has it in spades… and delivers seven days each week…

There is always room for human error…  we are all susceptible.

Best regards,

-a-

[carusoam]

18 minutes ago, ArtVandelay said:

I like to know how the pilots are slowing down without the gear being extended?

This is a question asked by about 50% of the Mooney pilots…

We probably have two types of approaches…

1) Speed

2) Efficiency 

SPEEDers:

When coming in blazing fast… all the brakes are going to be needed… it would be hard to miss not having the gear down…

Of course… with speed brakes, it is pretty easy to mask not having the gear down….

EFFICIENCYers:

When coming in using every ounce of energy from altitude… arriving at TPA on speed of about 90ias…. There isn’t a great need for braking…

 

Sooo…. The Mooniacs with the best energy management, and the worst energy managers, are both at a high risk of not recognizing their lower speed brakes not being out…. 

PP thoughts only, not a CFI…

Best regards,

-a-

[Mooney Dog]

44 minutes ago, ArtVandelay said:

I like to know how the pilots are slowing down without the gear being extended?

well you know...

decrease thrust, increase drag

[Will.iam]

2 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:

I like to know how the pilots are slowing down without the gear being extended?

I get down to the altitude i will be extending the gear 7 miles prior. Level flight 20”MP and 2200rpm and she slows down to 120 and i extend the gear and lower the flaps if needed before descending to land. If I’m still too fast i goto idle as the cylinders are already as cool as they would be when you shut down the engine so shock cooling is not an issue. 

[PT20J]

3 hours ago, M20Doc said:

I wonder how delivery pilots switch tanks when mid Atlantic and no airport in sight?

Clarence

I read Kerry McCauley’s book Ferry Pilot a while back. Apparently fuel issues are high on the list of what worries ferry pilots a lot. I doubt you would find a ferry pilot switching tanks unnecessarily.

I don’t believe unporting is a risk if there is fuel in the tank. I recently needed to replace a dribbling sump drain and ran the left tank empty in flight. Well after the low fuel light came on I tried some pretty radical maneuvers and the engine ran fine until the fuel ran out and it quit for good. 

Skip

[PT20J]

In the Navy, the submariners have a saying that the ratio of dives to surfaces should always equal one. Same with gear retractions and extensions, I think.

[jetdriven]

19 hours ago, Will.iam said:

While you are heads down looking at and pointing to the gear indicator in the floor a.k.a. Football slide your eyes and finger over to the fuel selector and also verify you are on the fullest tank least murphy reach up and bite you in the ass when you try to go around on that almost empty tank and unport the fuel pickup and shite thyself. 

Check that tank at top of descent.  Then there is no switching tanks low to the ground.  

[Guest]

3 hours ago, EricJ said:

I've been meaning to for a long time, but whenever the belly is off it's for some other reason and I forget and it doesn't get done.   The light that's there does work.

The lens is under the plastic centre floor console.

Clarence

[Guest]

41 minutes ago, PT20J said:

I read Kerry McCauley’s book Ferry Pilot a while back. Apparently fuel issues are high on the list of what worries ferry pilots a lot. I doubt you would find a ferry pilot switching tanks unnecessarily.

I don’t believe unporting is a risk if there is fuel in the tank. I recently needed to replace a dribbling sump drain and ran the left tank empty in flight. Well after the low fuel light came on I tried some pretty radical maneuvers and the engine ran fine until the fuel ran out and it quit for good. 

Skip

I would agree, any time a fuel system has been altered from the factory design by addition of additional tanks there is a possibility of fuel system failure.  The Hawaii bond Cirrus that went swimming comes to mind.  
 

Clarence

[Guest]

3 hours ago, KB4 said:

Useless comments don’t help keep the community safe. Find exceptions to more constructive things. We can all find them too 

There are safe and unsafe places to do everything, but not all fuel selector changes need to or can happen over a suitable airport, that’s all I was pointing out.  Sorry if you took it wrong.

Clarence

[Captain Warbucks]

I don't know if it's because of how far forward I sit (I'm 5 foot 6) or the glass over my floor indicator is dirty but I can never see through it to see what the position of the gear is. Any suggestions?

[A64Pilot]

5 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:

I like to know how the pilots are slowing down without the gear being extended?

First reduce power. then level off, and finally if needed climb 100’ or so, I don’t drop gear usually until in the white arc, it’s easy if you plan ahead.

Once the gear are down, then of course dropping the nose for a decent descent rate controls airspeed pretty well.

[A64Pilot]

Ferry wise, for the crop duster we made the 500 gl chemical hopper a ferry tank, you always ran off of the hopper prior to going feet wet to make sure it and the selector worked, then transferred to wing tanks after confirming the hopper tank worked, flew for four hours and leaving an hour or so of fuel in the wings selected the hopper tank. and prior to letting down out of altitude, after arriving at destination, you switched back to the wings.

So only one switch over water, but most ferry tank fuel systems have a transfer pump to transfer fuel into the factory fuel tanks, so no selecting is done, just have to remember to turn the transfer pump off, of your pumping fuel out of the vent when the wing tanks get full.

[A64Pilot]

50 minutes ago, Captain Warbucks said:

I don't know if it's because of how far forward I sit (I'm 5 foot 6) or the glass over my floor indicator is dirty but I can never see through it to see what the position of the gear is. Any suggestions?

I’m 5’10” and fat, and sit all the way forward, it’s not easy, but not real difficult either, primarily I’m looking for green.

I’d velcro a small mirror to the center console if I had to, coming from a high wing that you could see the gear, I want some kind of visual confirmation, velcro just to hold it, I assume you would have to pull it off to use it.

That and right after buying mine, the gear would not come down 1 out of 10 tries, ended up being the gear switch, but sometimes it’s possible for you to put that switch down and the gear don’t move.

[Will.iam]

6 hours ago, KB4 said:

This is a task that should have been handled way before.  Even if I was NOT on fullest, I ain’t touching that selector on final.  Get in habit of switching tanks over a field that you can make.  With any app with glide advisor the math is done for you. 

We all over look tasks and items from time to time. Like reading what we want to see instead of what’s there is the same type of mistake the pilot says after a gear up landing. I did not say SELECT the fullest tank when checking the gear indicator i said VERIFY as i know i could have missed selecting the fullest tank earlier in the descent or ATC gave me extended vectors or holding that by the time I’m lowering my gear, the fullest tank might now be the other tank by then.  This is my last chance to check and not forget and since my head is already looking down, one more second to check the tank selector is a safety check I’m willing to take. I see the risk of running out of gas on the lower tank being higher threat than the risk of the engine quitting due to me switching tanks at an altitude below glide to the runway. That is just me. I hope you never have a clogged wing vent on takeoff since you will not touch the fuel selector when there is not a field that you can make or refuse to select a tank that is more full when on final for that day you did forget to switch the tank seems like a lot of self imposed limitations you put on yourself to me.  But do tell why you have this limitation of not wanting to touch let alone switch tanks except only when you can glide to a landing field, and deem this so important, that other pilots also get into the habit of only doing a tank switch if they have a gliding distance to a landing field too. Have you had a past experience where moving the tank selector caused your engine to quit?   

[Will.iam]

3 hours ago, jetdriven said:

Check that tank at top of descent.  Then there is no switching tanks low to the ground.  

Yes that is true until you forget to switch at the top of descent and now that “verify” which I’m advocating at gear down allows me to catch missing the switch at the top of descent sort of like missing the word verify and thinking you saw switch in my original comment. 

[Will.iam]

4 hours ago, PT20J said:

I read Kerry McCauley’s book Ferry Pilot a while back. Apparently fuel issues are high on the list of what worries ferry pilots a lot. I doubt you would find a ferry pilot switching tanks unnecessarily.

I don’t believe unporting is a risk if there is fuel in the tank. I recently needed to replace a dribbling sump drain and ran the left tank empty in flight. Well after the low fuel light came on I tried some pretty radical maneuvers and the engine ran fine until the fuel ran out and it quit for good. 

Skip

Ironic i did the same thing for taking my plane down to annual as my right tank has leak on top underneath the step sheet that i wanted them to fix. I ran mine dry straight and level as i wanted to know how many mins i had left from the moment the low fuel light came on to when the engine quit. Never thought about if i could get anymore fuel / time out of the tank by slipping or raising the wing. Did you do these slips and other maneuvers before the engine started sputtering due to lack of fuel or when the low fuel light came on? 
if the former, how much longer did the engine run?

for the curious, i was running LOP and 7.1 fuel flow which got 32 mins and fuel totalizer showed 3.9 gallons from the moment the low fuel light came on to engine quitting. 
I’ll test the left wing after i get the plane back to see how many mins the low fuel light in left tank shows.

[ArtVandelay]

First reduce power. then level off, and finally if needed climb 100’ or so, I don’t drop gear usually until in the white arc, it’s easy if you plan ahead.
Once the gear are down, then of course dropping the nose for a decent descent rate controls airspeed pretty well.

That’s not what I’m saying…I know how to fly.

How do the gear up pilots get down to landing speed (for example 71 knots or less in my J) while descending without noticing their normal power settings aren’t working? (I assume it would be noticeable, I’ve never tried landing without the gear being down, I will have to try it, but not the actual landing part of course).

[Shadrach]

19 hours ago, KB4 said:

Useless comments don’t help keep the community safe. Find exceptions to more constructive things. We can all find them too 

I’ve been switching tanks in Mooneys for two decades. I’ve been sitting in Mooneys where tanks were switched for almost five decades. Never an issue. You should scan the NTSB database for fuel selector malfunction accidents that occurred while switching tanks versus fuel starvation with fuel still onboard. I think the data likely supports switching tanks if you’ve forgotten to do it earlier.

You come off as almost superstitious about your fuel selector. 

Edited September 13, 2021 by Shadrach

[bradp]

One other helpful thing - if I’m doing something that is not normal - do something awkward to remind yourself of a not normal situation. Example if I don’t extend my gear at my usual spot, I’ll stick my hand on the gear lever or dash pointing to it until I select it.  I’ll do this if my kids are being loud or distracting  in the back. I did it one night when my then 4 year old woke up with a night terror as I was turning onto final.  Another time when she woke up and started kicking my seat back when I was flying an ILS in IMC  … so that was fun.  

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Captain Warbucks said:

I don't know if it's because of how far forward I sit (I'm 5 foot 6) or the glass over my floor indicator is dirty but I can never see through it to see what the position of the gear is. Any suggestions?

There is a light bulb on a bracket attached to the retraction truss below the floor, it should come on with the gear down light in the annunciation panel.  If it doesn’t work it will be hard to see the two green lines.

Clarence

[steingar]

My gear goes down 3 miles from the airport.  3 miles from potential distractions.  If it's a busy airport I might do 5 miles.  I won't do repeated touching goes, too easy to get the order wrong, think you put down the gear but didn't.