[Amps] time to death...

[Jeff Blaine]

Great story Colin and Roger.

This redundancy thing can be taken to infinity.  Fortunately, the only life threating situation this amp provides is when I have my 
fingers poking around in it's guts.  For normal operation, I'm happy to have a main and a backup.  Of course, the amp has lived for 
25 years or so and not managed to explode without any of this "newfangled stuff that just breaks down all the time" - as my dad 
would have said...

73, Jeff ACØC
www.ac0c.com
-----Original Message----- 
From: Roger (K8RI)
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 2:03 PM
To: amps at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] time to death...



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
> _______________________________________________
> Amps mailing list
> Amps at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps
>
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps