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Link Posted: 4/12/2017 10:50:41 AM EDT
[#1]
"Eventually, the airplane’s wheels were lowered and it was towed to the Atlantic fixed-based operator hangar on the airport grounds."

Funny how that works, or should I say they work, even after all that damage.

Hmmm, no idea what caused that malfunction.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 11:01:05 AM EDT
[#2]
Chicago.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 11:42:08 AM EDT
[#3]
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Quoted:

Hmmm, no idea what caused that malfunction.
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I'm gonna speculate and say it was a switch malfunction- it was in the wrong position.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 12:40:07 PM EDT
[#4]
Some years ago a guy landed his biz-jet without lowering his gear at the McCall, ID airport.

It made for good conversation in the bar for a couple days. 
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 12:59:45 PM EDT
[#5]
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Quoted:


I'm gonna speculate and say it was a switch malfunction- it was in the wrong position.
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The switch malfunctioned between the pilots ears. Those who have and those who will........ blah blah blah.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 4:26:26 PM EDT
[#6]
It's got them new blended proptips.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 4:30:14 PM EDT
[#7]
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Quoted:
Some years ago a guy landed his biz-jet without lowering his gear at the McCall, ID airport.

It made for good conversation in the bar for a couple days. 
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Apropos of not much, I flew a RA-4000 into McCall.  What a beautiful, beautiful area.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 4:39:30 PM EDT
[#8]
That's still a good landing.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 6:13:01 PM EDT
[#9]
An old friend of mine and fellow Stearman pilot owns the wrecking company that recovered the airplane. He has some interesting photos on his Facebook page.
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 7:32:13 PM EDT
[#10]
Feces happens
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 9:45:59 PM EDT
[#11]
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Quoted:
An old friend of mine and fellow Stearman pilot owns the wrecking company that recovered the airplane. He has some interesting photos on his Facebook page.
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Well?
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 10:32:57 PM EDT
[#12]
Hello Allstate
Link Posted: 4/12/2017 10:46:02 PM EDT
[#13]
And now I know why the other thread is going


That BIG landing gear level is for a purpose or at least to remind you how stupid you are.
Link Posted: 4/14/2017 8:46:51 AM EDT
[#14]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
"Eventually, the airplane’s wheels were lowered and it was towed to the Atlantic fixed-based operator hangar on the airport grounds."

Funny how that works, or should I say they work, even after all that damage.

Hmmm, no idea what caused that malfunction.
View Quote
Several years ago, I helped get a single engine piper off the runway, after it had a 'gear malfunction'.

Pilot said the gear was down, and that it collapsed on landing.  When we got to the plane, the gear switch was down.  Once we had it hoisted up, one of the lighter guys crawled in and flipped the master switch on.  The inner gear doors opened, the gear came down, and the inner gear doors closed.  Only visible damage to the inner gear doors, was where they had scraped on the runway.

The pilot owned two planes.  The other one had fixed gear.  One of the linemen commented that the pilot hadn't flown the retractable gear plane in a couple months, but had been flying the fixed gear plane quite a bit.


As for King Airs, when the power levers are pulled back far enough to get the 'your gear is still up' buzzer, the system disables the gear switch.  To get the gear to function, you have to push the power levers back forward.  Apparently, Beechcraft's engineers thought that it was better to abort the approach than to try to get the gear down at the last second and risk touching down with it partially extended.
Link Posted: 4/14/2017 4:27:53 PM EDT
[#15]
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Quoted:

As for King Airs, when the power levers are pulled back far enough to get the 'your gear is still up' buzzer, the system disables the gear switch.  To get the gear to function, you have to push the power levers back forward.  Apparently, Beechcraft's engineers thought that it was better to abort the approach than to try to get the gear down at the last second and risk touching down with it partially extended.
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That doesn't happen in any of the King Airs I've flown (only the 350 and 350ER), or any of the other aircraft I've flown for that matter.  If you move the handle to the down position and it doesn't go down, then there's been a malfunction.   Also, when you pull the power back, if the horn goes on, you can silence it with a button.  If the flaps are down beyond a certain point with the gear up, the horn will also sound and cannot be silenced.

Mike
Link Posted: 4/14/2017 4:54:54 PM EDT
[#16]
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Quoted:


That doesn't happen in any of the King Airs I've flown (only the 350 and 350ER), or any of the other aircraft I've flown for that matter.  If you move the handle to the down position and it doesn't go down, then there's been a malfunction.   Also, when you pull the power back, if the horn goes on, you can silence it with a button.  If the flaps are down beyond a certain point with the gear up, the horn will also sound and cannot be silenced.

Mike
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My experience is with the E90, 100 and 200 (older models).

One day, after years of not having any real problems doing gear retractions on King Airs in the hangar, somebody decided that one of the company pilots could keep himself busy by sitting in the cockpit and playing pilot, instead of having to put a mechanic in the cockpit to play pilot.

"GEAR UP!"

Gear retracts with the usual noises, then we hear the warning horn for a couple seconds, then the horn quits.  Under normal circumstances, that would mean the mechanic in the cockpit pushed the power levers forward, so he wouldn't have to listen to that annoying noise, but we would soon learn that pilots do things a little differently.

We checked various things, then everybody cleared out from under the airplane.

"GEAR DOWN!"

Nothing.

"GEAR DOWN!"

Still nothing.

"SOMEBODY WAKE UP THE FUCKING PILOT!"

Then the pilot yelled that he had selected gear down, and nothing happened.

Next comes a half hour to forty five minutes of checking various things and a lot of head scratching, before somebody thought to ask the pilot to explain step by step what he had done from the beginning.  When he got to the part about silencing the gear warning by pushing a button, there was a lot of facepalming among the mechanics.

"PUSH THE POWER LEVERS FORWARD!"

"GEAR DOWN!"

...and the gear came down.  A check of the manuals showed that there is a relay that prevents the gear from extending when the power levers are pulled back far enough to sound the gear warning.  It will retract but not extend, until the levers are pushed forward.
Link Posted: 4/14/2017 5:01:56 PM EDT
[#17]
An old Operations Officer of mine almost landed a C-141 gear up during a checkride.  It shook him up so much that from then on he would have every crewmember onboard check that the gear was down on approach.  I remember flying with him and having him call me to the flight deck..."Please confirm that the landing gear is down", he said.  
Link Posted: 4/14/2017 5:11:47 PM EDT
[#18]
G
U
M
P
Link Posted: 4/15/2017 10:13:09 AM EDT
[#19]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:


That doesn't happen in any of the King Airs I've flown (only the 350 and 350ER), or any of the other aircraft I've flown for that matter.  If you move the handle to the down position and it doesn't go down, then there's been a malfunction.   Also, when you pull the power back, if the horn goes on, you can silence it with a button.  If the flaps are down beyond a certain point with the gear up, the horn will also sound and cannot be silenced.

Mike
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The 350 is hydraulic gear.  The other king airs have a monkey motion abortion of electric motor, bell cranks, and bicycle chains.....somewhat more prone to failure.  I knew a guy who flew a 350 and never used full flaps, I figure we will read about his gear up one of these days.
Link Posted: 4/15/2017 1:43:44 PM EDT
[#20]
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Quoted:

The other king airs have a monkey motion abortion of electric motor, bell cranks, and bicycle chains.....somewhat more prone to failure.
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That's a somewhat polite description.

There's also drive shafts and jack screws.  The jack screws have to periodically be removed from the mains and inspected for play.


The emergency extension system is a ratcheting handle that turns a bicycle sprocket that drives a chain connected to the transmission that the motor is mounted on (you have to first pull another handle that disables the power to the motor and engages the chain).  You pump the handle until the lights indicate that the gear is down, then stop pumping.  

If you keep pumping until the handle locks up (on the 200 - not sure about the others), some poor mechanic is going to have to pull the copilot's seat, the partition behind the copilot's seat, and the side facing couch that is usually just aft of that partition, then pull up the floor in that area.  They then will spend a considerable amount of time cussing as they pull two small bolts and loosen a third one on the bearing housing that the sprocket is mounted to, just to get the tension off the chain so that the emergency system can be disengaged.

I've told pilots that they won't get any grief from me if they have a gear motor failure and jam up the system by pumping until the handle binds up.  They've got too much to worry about in a situation like that, to bother thinking about what some mechanic might get stuck doing.  Mechanics, on the other hand, should expect much laughter at their expense, especially if they had been warned before they did it.

One of the apprentices suggested that a new IA talk to me before using the emergency extension system during a gear test, and he led the guy over to the small maintenance hangar to find me.  I explained what not to do, and what they would have to do to fix it if they screwed it up.

IA:  "Well, I've got years of experience working on King Airs, and I've never heard of such a thing, and never had any problems using the emergency extension system."

me:  "Ever work on a 200, before?"

IA:  "No."

me:  "It'll do it, every time you pump the handle until it won't pump any more."

He harrumphed, and they went back to the big maintenance hangar.

About 20 minutes later, the apprentice came back over and asked "Exactly which floor panels did you say would have to be pulled?".


ETA:  One possible way for the gear to fail, is a weak, worn out gear motor can get hot while retracting the gear, causing it to pop the circuit breaker.  The circuit breaker for the gear motor is underneath the center floor, aft of the power lever pedestal.  The pilots cannot reset that breaker, unless they happen to have brought the necessary tools with them and one pulls the floor up while the other flies.

As a bonus, the motor is under a greater load while retracting the gear in flight (the mains are pulled forward and up, against the airflow), than while retracting the gear on jacks in the hangar, so it may or may not pop the breaker when the mechanics are trying to figure out why the system failed in flight.
Link Posted: 4/15/2017 1:47:24 PM EDT
[#21]
Random story,

I landed at Chicago Exec last year in a 172 and went to Atlantic and saw Julia Louis-Dreyfus there. Her jet was parked next to our Cessna
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