Sure, but that isn’t a “speed record machine”.
ABout the RV-10, we do have one at our local club in LIPB. I will have a look tomorrow at the available machines, indeed it doesn’t seem too bad of a choice, as there is no time limit of a rental (so we could rent one, say, for a week). Also, there doesn’t seem to be high demand, it looks pretty easy to rent any of the machines even the night before. Let me sit in it and I will tell you :)
The instructor said “put it down on final”. As part of the check ride…
If it was a prof check it must have been with FE?
Would be interesting what the insurance thought about all this.
In 2017, I bought an Arrow 200 within a week of passing my check ride. I just could not stand anymore renting a plane and dealing with the reservations.
I wanted a plane that was neither worst or best in anything but ticked all the box for medium range traveling with family. I flew it for 300 hours before I sold it and walked with some of the best memories ever.
To sum it up, no, a plane like Arrow can easily be adapted to with a proper familiarization training so don’t feel intimated. I never had an issue getting insured even with zero time on retracts in Europe. US might be different but here it worked fine. Even most experienced pilots end up sometime bellying a retractable plane. So developing and flying precisely according to procedures designed for your airplane is key. When you sorted that out, just enjoy the “gears down, 3 green” call outs and smile because you are flying a proper airplane :):)
Steve6443 wrote:
The instructor demanded he did things “his way” rather than the way my friend would always do things – in this case, my friend would check gear down on downwind. The instructor said “put it down on final”.
I had a case like that on arrival to un-controlled airfield, on switching to the airfield frequency I heard about 6 aircrafts in the circuit, so I decided to slowdown and drop the gear at 3000ft agl (first defense against distraction and slow down without coming hot behind my aircraft), my RHS was parotting on doing it on downwind (saving for fuel he is not paying for it 
), I asked if we can leave it that way and him to remind me to check it on downwind, he forgot to remind me or call it he was busy looking for some slow microlight traffic behind his neck and the 3 aircrafts ahead of him but I was very glad he talked about it while on short final…meanwhile, I think I checked gear handle on every PPT button press
People fly retract gliders in non-standard & busy with lot of traffic distraction with less drama but they have better aerodynamics feedback on gear state, in SEP one need load of safety barriers, anyone suggesting his single magic method is probably wrong
Don’t the Arrows have that automatic system which drops the gear if your speed decays below some value? I recall some FI’s pulling the CB for this during stall exercises but otherwise, this is not the worst possible thing to have for a “first complex”.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Don’t the Arrows have that automatic system which drops the gear if your speed decays below some value? I recall some FI’s pulling the CB for this during stall exercises but otherwise, this is not the worst possible thing to have for a “first complex”.
At least early Arrows do. I believe later Arrows have a gear warning horn instead. But it’s not an electrical system – it’s controlled by dynamic pressure from a separate pitot tube. If the dynamic pressure drops too much, the gear will extend by releasing hydraulic pressure — same as an emergency drop. There is a mechanical latch to disable this system. The pitot tube is placed in the prop slipstream so with high power the gear stays up even at relatively low speeds.
I hade flown with that system and I thought it worked very well. Not bad at all for anyone, no matter the experience.
@Fly310 you may just need to remember to disable it in the event of engine failure, unless you want your glide to be very steep :)
Sure, but getting an engine failure is a bad situation anyway. :)
