I think that a lot of the warning systems are utterly antiquated. They just go BLEEEEEP or BOOOOOOP and you are supposed to know what that means? Taken together with the simple fact that the human brain filters out continuous sound after a short while, this is a recipe for disaster.
Yes, of course the crew should do better. Of course the Helios crew who didn’t realise what exactly the racket was and passed out troubleshooting the wrong problem were a bit high on the general muppetry scale. But tell that to the passengers…
Checklist discipline (and ALWAYS doing ‘reds, blues, greens, whites’ when coming over the threshold, everywhere) helps, but I would probably install an utterly illegal, yet useful mod that blares ‘Caution! Landing Gear’ through the intercom…
172driver wrote:
It’s actually not that high.
Sure, 40k is a snip for a few, but the cost of perhaps 2 years flying in one go is gonna hurt, especially if you get nothing in return but a red face and a couple of months downtime.
… and as far as the original question is concerned – go for it. I think I wrote about the student who bought an Arrow IV right after first solo and finished his PPL on it without any issues, and I myself went on to fly a Mooney 201 with 10 hours after my PPL, on a 520m runway to boot, with no issues.
A 201 into 520 m with 10 hours post PPL is pretty impressive! Anything under 600 m still makes me uncomfortable.
It is not that hard if you learned to fly on 520m and trained from day 1 to nail the approach speeds appropriate for the aircraft. It is of course difficult for those who are used to long runways and ambiguous touchdown points somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 into the runway. Most people will be in between these two extremes.
Take off on a hot day at MTOW, however…
(BTW – it was a paved runway)
Yes I learned on a long runway, and aimed for 71 kts over the fence regardless of weight. Knocking off 1kt per 100 lb below MTOW made a big difference to the quality of my landings. I guess doing that and aiming for 1.2-1.25 Vs0 will lead to some short landings.
I would advocate going for it if you want it. I bought mine at 55 hours total time and was out on my own after the ferry flight, an hour of circuits, and an hour of general handling, and haven’t looked back since.
THY wrote:
A properly faired wheelpant does not cause much drag really in the speed range of pistons. 10 – 20 knots top end, or so.
Without wanting to go too far off topic, a properly faired fixed gear will make far less impact than 10-20 knots.
Look at Mike Arnold’s AR-5 for example. 210mph on a 65hp rotax with less than 1sq ft equivalent flat plate drag.
Fixed gear too. He made a series of videos on the design and construction (well worth watching, just search for "mike arnold ar5 in youtube) and basically he would need to make the wing thicker to accommodate retracts, resulting in a net drag increase and speed loss.
Therefore I would argue that on something like a Cirrus, which is quite a refined and modern design, you would likely not see 10-20kts improvement with retracts.
That said, when discussing (aerodynamically) simpler designs such as Pipers, Socatas etc I’d much prefer retractable gear, even just because it looks cooler. Having seen lots of light aircraft in pieces, I would say that with the exception of Cessnas, retract systems are usually dead simple and would need serious abuse/neglect to actually present a notable maintenance problem or cost increase. Most light aircraft don’t even have sequenced gear doors (again I’m not including the Cessna RGs here).
Cobalt wrote:
I would probably install an utterly illegal, yet useful mod that blares ‘Caution! Landing Gear’ through the intercom…
The system we installed was perfectly legal. P2 audio advisory system, airspeed activated, blaring in the intercom:
“Check gear, check gear”
“Overspeed, overspeed”
The proper solution is some form of RADALT linked to the landing gear. But this is never going to be really trivial, by the time it is a certified (TSOd etc) product.
Simply converting the gear warning horn voltage into some audio voice annunciation is easy. The trouble is that one can fool that system.
AML STC:
No need to reinvent the wheel (usually a bad thing but more so in aviation)
