Baron Landing Gear

The Baron (and the similar gear in the Bonanzas) is a purely mechanical gear system. If there is no electric power or the motor dies, you can crank it (and it's like over 100 cranks of a not particularly easy to reach handle) to move it down.

This however, isn't failproof either. If the gear strips or something bends in the linkage or jams the mechanism, hand cranking isn't going to be any more successful than the motor.

Here's a nice paper on the topic https://bonanza.org/documents/Manual Gear Extension.pdf
 
RotorAndWing said:
Can't happen. Everyone knows Beech has too much "quality" built in........
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But, but....an expert on the internet told me: it has to be true!

Like anything else, no amount of quality from the factory is going to help cheap knuckleheads who don't take care of the inner workings.
 
flyingron said:
and it's like over 100 cranks of a not particularly easy to reach handle) to move it down.
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More like 50. And the handle is plenty easy enough to reach if you ever got a proper checkout and did the emergency extension drill. I suppose if you were unfamiliar with the crank and had never used it, it might seem tricky the first time.
 
50 turns counterclockwise.

Biggest headache: interior work that renders the crank useless. Keeping that one in mind as well as I redo the floorboards.
 
If the spar cover is out on and covers the manual handle, in the event the motor fails one will not have a crank available to manually extend. Always check this after ANY maintain is performed.

So to answer the question, an incorrectly installed interior piece of trim.
 
Many landing gear problems are attributed to inadequate lubrication. Found an L1011 nose gear trunnion bearing to be missing a grease channel so it had only gotten grease when it was assembled, gear was slow to actuate.
 
GlennAB1 said:
Many landing gear problems are attributed to inadequate lubrication. Found an L1011 nose gear trunnion bearing to be missing a grease channel so it had only gotten grease when it was assembled, gear was slow to actuate.
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I know of a early model Bonanza that hasn't been on jacks in years. The owner gets a $300 "owner assisted annual" each time, and the IA watches him fly over the runway and retract the gear, put it back down and land, then calls it good to go.
 
RotorAndWing said:
I know of a early model Bonanza that hasn't been on jacks in years. The owner gets a $300 "owner assisted annual" each time, and the IA watches him fly over the runway and retract the gear, put it back down and land, then calls it good to go.
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$300, eh? An A36 just went through a fairly routine annual and came to a total of roughly $7,000...
 
I find it a little odd that he tried to deploy his gear 10 miles out... I suppose he may have done it to try to loose altitude.
 
Grum.Man said:
I find it a little odd that he tried to deploy his gear 10 miles out... I suppose he may have done it to try to loose altitude.
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I wouldn't call it the norm, but I have on quite a few occasions in the Baron put the gear down that far out when I could tell ATC was brining me in high and setting me up for a slam dunk.
 
The only real way to have a bonanza gear problem is to get a broken rod end on one of the retract rods. Yes catastrophic sector gear failures can happen in the gearbox but that is exceptionally rare.

The rod ends shouldn't be expected to last 40 years. If your plane has a few thousand hours and they've never been changed, pony up a couple hour's worth of fuel cost and replace them. It's really a case of neglect to have a beechcraft gear failure. Sadly, it happens. Some people just can't be bothered to take care of basic maintenance.
 
I know of one Baron in which the up limit switch was incorrectly rigged. Gear went up just fine but stripped the drive gears because the motor kept running. Couldn't hand-crank it down and the plane was bellied in. There was enough aluminum ground off the spar carry-through the plane was scrapped. Repairs were simply uneconomical.
 
JHW said:
It's really a case of neglect to have a beechcraft gear failure. Sadly, it happens. Some people just can't be bothered to take care of basic maintenance.
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That was definitely the impression I got from researching Beech gear up accidents before I got my Baron.

Two things that stood out on all the NTSB reports:

1). Keep up on the maintenance, don't skimp on the gear motor maintenance in particular.

2) Don't do touch and goes or touch the gear/flaps until you are clear of the runway and take your time.
 
Norman said:
I know of one Baron in which the up limit switch was incorrectly rigged. Gear went up just fine but stripped the drive gears because the motor kept running. Couldn't hand-crank it down and the plane was bellied in. There was enough aluminum ground off the spar carry-through the plane was scrapped. Repairs were simply uneconomical.
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CB should pop if the sector gear hits the stop. It must have had the wrong CB installed, or it was bypassed. Also you check the limit switches each annual, it's easy to check just raise the gear then use the hand crank to make sure there is some more travel available. Again, multiple ways to make sure something like that doesn't happen. Simple neglect and apathy causes accidents like that.
 
JHW said:
CB should pop if the sector gear hits the stop. It must have had the wrong CB installed, or it was bypassed. Also you check the limit switches each annual, it's easy to check just raise the gear then use the hand crank to make sure there is some more travel available. Again, multiple ways to make sure something like that doesn't happen. Simple neglect and apathy causes accidents like that.
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Agreed. Just glad it wasn't our shop.
 
Happened to a friends F33 when the upholstery shop left a pair of cutters in the carry through under the pilot's seat.
 
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