Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

When do you drop the landing gear?

what_next wrote:

“Circle to land” is standard practice at places where an instrument approach exists only in one direction (usually due to mountains/obstacles on the other side) but the wind blows the other way. So yes, they do fly visual patterns every now and then.

Yes but in such approach they don’t lower the gear on downwind, they rather do it as per original approach.

And yes, they do VFR patterns as part of training and they lower the gear on downwind in that case. You can see a lot of such flights at Croatian coastal airports (especially Pula and Zadar) during winter.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

I can’t help finding an hydraulic system a bit of overkill on such a light plane

Well it depends. For the gear I can understand the choice, since it is designed to be operated in the water and to be used to clamp the aircraft on some underground. The gear is pretty rugged to allow the aircraft to be beached and ramped, so it is heavy. I don’t think many seaplanes have problems with lubrication, because you need to grease the gear every 25 hours if you do water ops anyway. Not counting maintenance neglect, obviously. The hydraulic trim is weird but with the huge trim flaps so close in the propwash I can understand why they went hydraulic. The system is dead simple with only one electric and one manual pump, but it is said to be a real PITA to troubleshoot. And without the hydraulic system the aircraft is said to be almost unflyable.

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

But I question the need to do anything powered at all on a plane of less than 700 kg MTOW.

My Lake has an empty weight of 807kg.

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

What places are there in Germany that allow water operations?

EDUY is the only open watering site, the others are only Sonderlandeplätze and you need permission from the Landesluftfahrtbehörde. There is the Neckar and the Flensburger Förde, some more lakes in East Germany. There have been Sonderlandeplätze in Wangerooge and the harbours of Hamburg and Bremen, although the last one apparently was a bit tricky to fly from. In the south you have some lake near Dingolfing if I remember correctly, and of course the Bodensee.

There used to be over 100 German Wasserflugplätze in former times, since Germany was leading in seaplane technology, but after the war none were reopened and almost all research on the topic was shipped to the US and Russia.

Last Edited by mh at 20 Aug 11:00
mh
Aufwind GmbH
EKPB, Germany

mh wrote:

My Lake has an empty weight of 807kg.

Apologies, wikipedia had tricked me into believing you meant another Buccaneer. Yes, on that plane hydraulics make more sense.

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

huv wrote:

mh wrote:

If I want to land gear down

What am I missing here?

About half my landings are done intentionally with the wheels retracted. It is a big discipline to assure wheels are up when required, I refer to it as “configuration assurance” when I train newer pilots. The “wheels are down” or “three in the green” is not the ultimate in pilot discipline.

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

I think that it’s better to plan to change your configuration when you need to change something to your flightpath, so that you minimise the workload. For instance plan to extend the gear when you start to descend will minimise the power adjustment.

I was told 7-5-3 distance for flap-gear-flap. Easy to remember.

LPFR, Poland

My thoughts are much with everyone elses, but I am not sure if that has come from the training enviroment, and I asked the question to see if any of the training can or should be challenged. In many aircraft the gear is taken pretty earlier on in the arrivals process, and often it is a very good way of slowing the aircraft down. It also gets rid of a critical element at a time of low workload.

On the other hand you have created a whole load of drag, and should anything go wrong, the problems associated with that, not least potentially the greater problems of not being able to readily clean up the gear on some aircraft without a lot of effort. In an engine failure situation in a twin the last thing you want is a load of drag.

Fuji_Abound: what is taught in flight school is usually not operational at all. I was taught de fly the 4NM approach at 75kt with 2 stages of flaps with the 172.Unless the weather is very bad, I fly the approach with one stage of flaps at 90kts, and I slow down when I see the runway.

Flying an M20 with a Johnson bar, I like to pull the gear when I’ve hit Vle, which is usually timed to coincide with midfield downwind or pattern altitude for VFR. It slows the slippery bird down and the force feedback from the wind at that velocity forces me to really be sure I hear the “click” of the safety when I lock the bar because more force is required than when flying slower, and the intensity of it somehow makes me focus on it more…

Glad to hear the feedback about noise abatement procedures (prop forward on final) as this is a major issue here. Thanks for the tip guys. I was just doing what I was taught, which is clearly not a courtesy to the locals.

Which reminds me of something a little off topic about the prop:
I’ve been taught by 3 instructors to set prop forward for power-out scenarios. But the best instructor I’ve had (thanks Don, you made me the pilot I am) demonstrates how much further you glide if you pull the prop instead. Of course this is the last thing to do after all other procedures fail, but I am amazed at the difference in glideslope performance. If anyone is still using full prop while gliding, try the opposite, it is amazing how much more range you get to land safely.

Last Edited by AF at 23 Aug 20:07

I’ve been taught by 3 instructors to set prop forward for power-out scenarios. But the best instructor I’ve had (thanks Don, you made me the pilot I am) demonstrates how much further you glide if you pull the prop instead. Of course this is the last thing to do after all other procedures fail, but I am amazed at the difference in glideslope performance. If anyone is still using full prop while gliding, try the opposite, it is amazing how much more range you get to land safely

True. I got that in the US CPL checkride. The DPE showed me with fully fine and fully coarse. The difference is huge – of the order of 1/3 more glide distance.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top