[Amps] time to death...

[Roger (K8RI)]

On 11/11/2010 2:11 PM, Colin Lamb wrote:
> A friend of mine has a retractable gear aircraft.  It has a gear lever that goes forward and backward to make it go down and up.  I got checked out in it a few years ago and the check pilot tried to trip me up and told me the gear was still up when I was on final.  I blindly believed him and went to move the lever to the other position.  Fortunately, he did not let me.  But, I realized how vulnerable the pilot is in that aircraft.
I was going to say this had to be a home built aircraft as any retract 
built in the last 50 years has to have both a gear warning horn 
(activated by retarding the throttle with the gear up) and indicating 
lights for both up and down gear positions.
> I suggested installing a microswitch and light on the dash - which he did last year.  Except it was a Radio Shack led (not very bright).
Even many of the commercial ones are not very bright.
>   A few months ago, he took another pilot up for a flight, was telling him of the virtues of his aircraft and saw what he thought was a lit led.  Except it was lit by the sun hitting the side of it.  As he was on final approach, the passenger kept telling him the gear was up, but the pilot was focused on landing and ignored that, landing gear up in front of a number of friends.  Fortunately, about the only damage was the wooden prop.

That requires an engine teardown according to engine manufacturers, 
although he may not have had a certified engine.
>    This was at least the third time the aircraft has been landed wheels up, all three times with two otherwise competent pilots aboard.  In one case, two high time instructors did it.
>
> I mention this because it is the same thing that contest operators do.
Not usually.  In the aircraft it is *usually* conditioning. Be it from 
memory or a check list, it's Gas (fullest main), Undercarriage (3 green 
although on mine it's one green and pointer down), prop on final (prop 
into fine pitch/high RPM)  After doing this many, many times you see 
what you *expect* to see. I had an instructor pull the breaker for the 
gear on down wind. At the proper point I hit the gear down switch, added 
flaps and then identified the gear  down indication.  As we were coming 
"over the fence" I retarded the throttle (The Deb takes a fair amount of 
power on final). At that point the gear warning horn went off. I looked 
at the instructor and said, "You pulled the breaker didn't you?) and his 
reply/ "And you identified the gear down THREE TIMES. Once each on down 
wind, base, and final! I saw a green light and the nose gear pointer was 
down. The only abnormal thing was the airplane was not slowing down like 
I expected. When the gear goes down it's like hitting the brakes.  This 
is quite different than ignoring the warnings or being distracted. I 
instruct all passengers when in the pattern, to look for other 
airplanes, but other than pointing them out to me...KEEP QUIET!<:-))

>    So, having things bullet proof automatic to override gross mental errors is good.  Such things as grid trip and swr shutdown can save your amplifier.
>
> As for the aircraft, I got one of the high brightness leds to replace the puny one and there is no question now when the gear is down - or at least when the light is on.
>
My Glasair III will have 3 green for down and 3 red for up when it's 
finished.

73

Roger (K8RI)
> 73,  Colin  K7FM
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