No-one seems to have mentioned zero G. Also worth a try.
Then there is the debate as to whether to stop the prop(s) or not. That is obviously easiest on a twin, as they will feather, and you might induce it in a wobbly prop single by going fully coarse, but probably not where you want your focus in a fixed pitch aircraft (trying to think of a fixed pitch, wobbly gear aircraft – I guess there must be one). But a windmilling prop will be much cheaper and overall safer than a running engine.
Two Swiss guys last year had a gear failing to lock on a Cessna 177. They took a jumper cable from the back of the plane, opened the right hand door and pulled the gear into position with the help of the cable slung around the gear leg.
That beats everything!! Swiss ingenuity.
Follow the checklist. First and foremost. On some airplanes, you get exactly one chance for an alternate gear extension, blow that, and you are on the belly.
On my airplane with the manual gear, I always thought it was impossible. I read now that it is not. If one tries to extend the gear with a foot on the pedal, it may lock in the up position with the nosegear tilted to one side. The way to unlock it is fairly easy, center the gear and try again. To lock it down, as usual, make sure the Johnson Bar is in properly and then shake it in order to make sure. The green light can come on without a total lock as some folks found out.
It is worth mentioning that when your plane is in for maintenance and up on jacks it is a good time to test how to use the emergency gear extension knob. I did that recently on my TB20 and it was only then that I found out that there is a small part of the lever that is effectively a button that has to be pushed in to pull the lever out. The whole lever is painted red so the button part wasn’t immediately obvious.
Rwy20 wrote:
Two Swiss guys last year had a gear failing to lock on a Cessna 177. They took a jumper cable from the back of the plane, opened the right hand door and pulled the gear into position with the help of the cable slung around the gear leg.
Buckerfan wrote:
That beats everything!! Swiss ingenuity.
The Cessna 177RG has MANY [true] stories regarding pilots having a gear problems and using “creative” solutions.
My favorite: In 1974 a crew of two at Reims Aviation took a brand new 177RG up for it’s maiden shake-down flight. After finishing the tests, they returned to land, only to find they did not get a green gear down light. They rapidly determined that there was a hydraulic leak and they had lost all of the fluid . Having no other suitable fluid aboard, they pee’d into a coffee cup and filled the hydraulic reservoir with the precious fluid (nb: the electro-hydraulic power pack in the 177RG is easily accessible from the cabin, just behind a removable panel back of the bagage area).
They were then able to pump the gear down and landed without further incident.
One more item if gear-up landing is inevitable: if you have a choice, land on a hard runway, not on grass. On grass parts of the airframe might dig in and cause much greater damage.
Michael wrote:
Having no other suitable fluid aboard, they pee’d into a coffee cup and filled the hydraulic reservoir with the precious fluid
Yep, that also works in the C210! Even easier, as the reservoir is behind the center pedestal and easily reached from the front right seat.
Depending on the aircraft, I might check gear verified up and look for a suitable lake. The LA4 is said to be able to land undamaged on grass with the gear up, though.
With the other aircraft (BE35/C310), assuming sufficient fuel, I will try the check list items and depending on the failure, try some other things.
But I probably won’t do that:
mh wrote:
Depending on the aircraft, I might check gear verified up and look for a suitable lake.
A lake? That means a total loss of the airframe plus possible loss of occupants after a ditching.
Landing gear up on a hard surface runway is almost always repairable and much less of a risk for the occupants too imho. Also better than landing on grass as said in a previous post, on grass the airframe may well dig itself in and either flip over or at least get damaged much more than the few scratches it will get from landing on hard surface.
Given the choice, I’d always go for a hard surface runway if possible with fire and rescue services available.
