I too admit that I will sometimes partially retract the flaps during the rollout, though its a disciplined action: Put fingers on the flap knob, pause, think about what your fingers are holding, state “flaps identified”, pause and think, and reselect. My reason for doing this has nothing to do with braking, as I hardly ever brake during landings, but rather to reset the flaps from 40 to 15 degrees, as that is the flap position I have found is most effective on single Cessnas for making the elevator effective in holding the nosewheel light. Every landing will involve smoothly moving the elevator to full up after touchdown, and holding it there until the airplane is parked. My early days involved doing many Cessna nose oleo rebuilds. The needless wear and damage I saw made me very conscious of nosewheel care, so I try to prevent it.
Antonio wrote:
But then the risk of gear retraction is almost non existent on this type
Is true for the mainwheels, yes. The single Cessna RG’s have their WoW switch on the nosewheel. I learned this in my early days, when I flew a 177RG with frequent gear switch problems. These days, when I fly the 182RG, I’m very conscious of my habit to hold the nose light after touchdown, and the mains might be on, but the nose not bearing weight yet, so no WoW switch to save a mistake I could make. And, as I trained it’s owner, I hardly have an excuse for doing exactly what I trained him not it do!
For thread drift, the 177RG I flew back in the late ’70’s was run out of gas in downwind by a rental pilot, who force landed it with minor damage in a field beside the airport. They fixed it, and with new paint and interior, another pilot did about the same thing only a month after it was back in service (I’d been waiting to rent it, but had not yet). This time, the careless pilot ran the forced landing checklist a little too quickly, so turned off the master after gear down selection, but before it was actually down. The only thing worse for an RG than landing wheels up, is landing it with the wheels partly extended. After that, they wrote the plane off. That was one of my formative lessons in assuring that you are commanding what you expect to have happen, and then confirm that it has!
It would seen to me that hard landings are just a poor excuse for not being at the right place at the right speed in the correct attitude, it matters not if you are flying a Piper, Boeing, Robin or Airbus.
