Comments on: Emergency Landing Gear Extension – Keep It Simple

By: Performance, Weight and Balance – A costly lesson | Plastic Pilot

Performance, Weight and Balance – A costly lesson | Plastic Pilot — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:02:03 +0000

[...] of the type of take-off, but also of the type of aircraft. I personally don’t like the emergency landing gear extension system of the Bonanza. I would tend to leave the gear down longer on a Bonanza because of it. Could gear retraction have [...]

By: DA42 Systems - Anti-ice and landing gear | Plastic Pilot

DA42 Systems - Anti-ice and landing gear | Plastic Pilot — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:09:48 +0000

[...] pump fails, pulling a lever releases the pressure and the gear falls out by gravity. It’s as simple as it must be, and I like it so. Another difference between the DA40 and the DA42 is that the 42 has nose-wheel [...]

By: Julien

Julien — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:48:51 +0000

On the Yak-18T, there's a visual indicator located on the actual wing, that indicates that the landing gear is down and locked. This solves the problem of checking gear extension visually on low-wing airplanes. It's basically a metal pin that gets pushed up when the gear goes down. When the gear is up, the pin is kind-of flush with the wing. I've put a picture of this system near the end of this blog post of mine. You have to admire Russian engineering for coming up with simple and robust systems. And probably cheaper to build and maintain too.

By: Transition to Complex Aircraft

Transition to Complex Aircraft — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:02:47 +0000

[...] Comparison between the Saratoga and Bonanza emergency landing gear extension systems [...]

By: Flying the PA32 - Saratoga

Flying the PA32 - Saratoga — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:47:06 +0000

[...] Read more One thing I really like on the Saratoga is the extreme simplicity of the landing gear’s emergency extension system. Click here to read more about it, and how it compares to the Bonanza’s system. [...]

By: PlasticPilot

PlasticPilot — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:53:24 +0000

Thank you Jess for this complement. I never liked the look of the Cessna system either. On the plus side however, the visual check is much easier, thanks to high-wing.

There is a third thing that gets hurt in a belly landing: pilot’s ego. I’m still part of the club of pilots who never landed gear up, waiting for my admission in the other club…

By: Jess Sightler

Jess Sightler — Sat, 03 May 2008 23:41:28 +0000

I like the old Mooney system. It was a johnson bar, similar to the flap handle on the Piper’s and was pure mechanical. From what I hear it did take a bit of getting used to, but they almost never break (low maintenance costs) and you never have to worry about a failure causing trouble in the air.

The worst is on the Cessna high wing retractables (172RG, 182RG, etc). They are hydraulic, but they will not fall into place on their own due to the nature of retracts on a high-wing aircraft. The backup hydraulic system is close to useless as well from what I understand. In most cases manual extension just doesn’t work at all (thus all the videos of Cessna’s landing with the rear gear flopping), though I have heard of some creative souls getting them to extend by hanging out of the aircraft with a golf club.

Of course, the most interesting thing to me is still the misconception among non-pilots that a gear up landing is a major near death experience. Most of the time all that gets hurt is an airplane belly and a wallet.