Belly landing.

Wow, nice landing. Even cut the engines to reduce the need for a teardown. Then he ran back to shut off the master switch...personally, I wouldn't have gone back but it was his call.

Looks like that plane will fly again.
 
If the gear is only partially extended, why leave the gear partially out? Why not retract them fully then land? (Assuming they could get the gear up again)
I'm thinking less overall damage, and far more importantly, less likely to spin you around during the slide.

Just a thought to consider.
 
Jack Spectre said:
Wow, nice landing. Even cut the engines to reduce the need for a teardown. Then he ran back to shut off the master switch...personally, I wouldn't have gone back but it was his call.

Looks like that plane will fly again.
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Pretty much every person that has been killed trying to land gear up has been killed because they cut the engines. Myself? I'll run the engine(s) into the pavement.
 
jesse said:
Pretty much every person that has been killed trying to land gear up has been killed because they cut the engines. Myself? I'll run the engine(s) into the pavement.
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That's cause they cut the engines too soon.
 
Once you're committed to a gear-up landing, the aircraft belongs to the insurance company. The only thing to save is your own butt. If you think they are going to "overlook" the incident because you tried to stop the prop horizontally ... hmmm ... I don't think so.

I agree - fly the thing all the way down under power.
 
tonycondon said:
thats an interesting looking cessna
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I thought the same thing, but this is "A YouTube video similar to the one Gerecht watched." This is not video of this particular belly landing.

I'm just trying to find out why a South African Newspaper would run a story about a German guy belly landing in Corsica...
 
I'm with the camp that says leave the engines running. I want to be able to go around, since it's a perfectly flyable airplane until it touches down.

I loved this line from the article, though!
"It was a perfect example of Franco-German co-operation." - Daily Mail
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Slow news day in Joburg?

vontresc said:
I thought the same thing, but this is "A YouTube video similar to the one Gerecht watched." This is not video of this particular belly landing.

I'm just trying to find out why a South African Newspaper would run a story about a German guy belly landing in Corsica...
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EdFred said:
That's cause they cut the engines too soon.
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I'm sure they would have said the same thing too. Mistakes happen. You already have one emergency I don't see a reason to add another.
 
jesse said:
Pretty much every person that has been killed trying to land gear up has been killed because they cut the engines. Myself? I'll run the engine(s) into the pavement.
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When I hit the pavement I am going WOT so they will buy me a new everything!!



(j/k)
 
jesse said:
I'm sure they would have said the same thing too. Mistakes happen. You already have one emergency I don't see a reason to add another.
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So when should you cut the engines? As soon as you start to hear the tic, tic, tic of the blades hitting the blacktop or after you come to a full stop and decide it won't taxi under it's own power?:wink2:

I thought the guy did a fine job.
 
ok who the hell wrote this news story?

That '50something Beech TravelAir is based at GKY Arlington, TX. It's a trainer and flies every day. That video was from a Dallas based camera crew... There are 2 other multi engine flightschools on the field that cater to foreigners.

So yea.... this is the 2nd gear up at that flight school in a couple years.

As for feathering the props... If you've got the runway made.... Why not save the engines?
 
ntbjounin said:
As for feathering the props... If you've got the runway made.... Why not save the engines?
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Who are you saving them for? As someone else said, at that point the insurance company owns the airplane. It may increase the salvage value of the airplane, but it doesn't make any difference to the owner. AND on the off chance that the airframe does not get totaled, the owner can get a brand new pair of engines out of the deal. At least fresh overhauls. Seems like win win to me.

Besides, stopping the engines is not without risk.
 
I recently went to a safety seminar in Denver given by a guy who used to be a Lawyer for Cessna. I think he now works for the FSDO.

He pointed out that there have been ZERO fatalities due to stuck landing gear when the engine was left running.

There have been greater than zero fatalities due to stuck landing gear when the pilot killed the engine prior to shutdown. (to be pedantic, I guess the fatality was due to blunt force trauma due to ground impact due to loss of aircraft control due to the pilot fiddling with the engine and not doing his job)

Bend the metal not the pilot!
 
I killed the engine when I landed the champ with the left landing gear all but removed. But then 90% of my landings are power off anyway so the power off landing was no big deal. I did think landing with only one operable gear leg was a big deal.
It cost less to repair than the Deductable would have been for the insurance.

Brian
 
jesse said:
I'm sure they would have said the same thing too. Mistakes happen. You already have one emergency I don't see a reason to add another.
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I'm probably going to head to BTL if I have a gear won't go down coming to my home 'drome and I'm in a twin. 10000' runway. Fly higher than normal approach speed, bring it in shallow, once OVER the runway, kill and feather. Bleed the speed and scrape it on in. Never kill em before over the runway.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
Who are you saving them for? As someone else said, at that point the insurance company owns the airplane.
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Not really. It's still my plane, and if I really like it, I can get it back in a few weeks with a gear and skin repair vs. looking for 6+ months for a replacement craft on a total, I'll probably take the few weeks down time vs 1/2 a year. Of course, that's provided I have a twin with enough clearance that the props won't get bent anyway.
 
Jack Spectre said:
Wow, nice landing. Even cut the engines to reduce the need for a teardown. Then he ran back to shut off the master switch...personally, I wouldn't have gone back but it was his call.
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Worried that it would spontaneously ignite ? The gear was partially out, , the landing was soft, very little chance that a fuel tank could have been breached.
 
weilke said:
Worried that it would spontaneously ignite ? The gear was partially out, , the landing was soft, very little chance that a fuel tank could have been breached.
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More likely the Hobbs was wired to the master and he didn't want to add up any more time to pay for.:D
 
The general concensus seems to be that if you kill the engine you'll save it. Maybe if the nose gear is down but with everything still in the wells, this becomes a tricky maneuver.

Getting a 3-blade into a position where a blade won't strike the pavement is nearly impossible and a windmilling 2-blade requires some skill to stop it just short of stall speed. You will notice in the video that even though the engines stopped in advance of the landing, the props still bent backwards upon impact. That's a prop strike, even if they aren't turning and the engines are headed in for a teardown and check, at a minimum.

So, now you have an emergency on your hands. You're 20 feet over a 10,000 foot runway and your trying to get the prop to stop windmilling by approaching stall speed, while still some distance above the runway.

This is what turns a routine scraping incident into a fall, nose down from 20 feet, at 60 mph.

Think about how you'll explain killing your passenger to the FAA, and to the passenger's family, when everyone will KNOW that you could have made this a routine gear up landing by dealing with a single, relatively benign emergency. Inadvertent gear-up landings are a total non-event, beyond the embarrassment and the cost. Why turn a non-event into a high-risk situation, just because you have time to plan the landing?

This is why you carry insurance. Use it. If you don't have insurance, don't put someone's life at risk because of your poor planning.
 
jimbtv said:
The general concensus seems to be that if you kill the engine you'll save it. Maybe if the nose gear is down but with everything still in the wells, this becomes a tricky maneuver.

Getting a 3-blade into a position where a blade won't strike the pavement is nearly impossible and a windmilling 2-blade requires some skill to stop it just short of stall speed. You will notice in the video that even though the engines stopped in advance of the landing, the props still bent backwards upon impact. That's a prop strike, even if they aren't turning and the engines are headed in for a teardown and check, at a minimum.

So, now you have an emergency on your hands. You're 20 feet over a 10,000 foot runway and your trying to get the prop to stop windmilling by approaching stall speed, while still some distance above the runway.

This is what turns a routine scraping incident into a fall, nose down from 20 feet, at 60 mph.

Think about how you'll explain killing your passenger to the FAA, and to the passenger's family, when everyone will KNOW that you could have made this a routine gear up landing by dealing with a single, relatively benign emergency. Inadvertent gear-up landings are a total non-event, beyond the embarrassment and the cost. Why turn a non-event into a high-risk situation, just because you have time to plan the landing?

This is why you carry insurance. Use it. If you don't have insurance, don't put someone's life at risk because of your poor planning.
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Yep, just like this :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::

 
vontresc said:
I'm just trying to find out why a South African Newspaper would run a story about a German guy belly landing in Corsica...
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I met a German girl in England who was going to school in France, and we danced the Mississippi at an Alpha Kappa dance....
 
We had an R182 land with the nosewheel stuck in the well after an owl strike at night caved the gear doors in. The mains came out OK. The pilot stopped the prop and bumped it to horizontal with the starter, but when the nose touched down the remaining compression in one cylinder caused the prop to rotate and grind one tip on the runway, causing the insurance company to demand an entire teardown anyway. Their experience was the same as Lycoming's: any prop strike is bad news and can cause internal damage that shows up later and results in a much worse accident.

Since then, Lycoming has had an AD published regarding prop strikes, and you should know what their definition of prop strike includes. It's much broader than most think. In many of their engine the crankshaft gear is retained by a single small bolt and located by a dowel, and any rapid deceleration can cause that bolt to loosen or the dowel to partially shear, and later failure is almost certain.

The AD: http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_G...e5f8683a0a4686256e9b004bc295/$FILE/041014.pdf

I had a crankshaft break on me. It had an old crack in it, and was most likely the result of a propstrike in the distant past.

Dan
 
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EdFred said:
Yep, just like this :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::
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And you think most of us have feathering props? :rofl:

Single engine retracts typically don't have those, nor the ground clearance even with a stopped prop, to make the effort worth while. Most of us "Cessna-types" also have two, and sometimes 3-bladed props, which swing a greater total diameter than those nifty little 4-bladers.

Try something that you might find interesting. Climb to a safe altitude and pull the mixture back to cut-off, then slow the aircraft until the prop stops windmilling. Configure for landing if you like, but leave the gear in the wells. Note your airspeed and sink rate, and while holding your altitude and course (like landing on a runway), and a mild descent (like 200 fpm), see if you can bring the aircraft to a smooth, transitional stall (like landing on a runway) without causing the prop to start windmilling again.

After you've done that successfully, to the point where you can stop the prop where the blades won't touch the ground, make a smooth transition to stall within - say - 1,000 feet forward motion, without losing more than 20 feet altitude at a rate of maybe 200 feet per minute, while maintaining a heading to within a degree or two, you'll be ready for that procedure in an actual gear-up landing.

Now practice it regularly so that you'll be fresh when the time comes. :thumbsup:

Of course, you might be one of those pilots that's "a natural", and can do all that stuff blindfolded. My experience has shown that most of us THINK they are made of that same stuff. Actual statistics show otherwise.

Personally, unless I'm practiced on the procedure, I'm going to have access to full power until the moment I'm guaranteed I won't need it. You and I may differ on exactly when that time is, during this type of event. I couldn't care less about cashing in my decade's-worth of insurance premiums.
 
He did not cut the engines until he flared fro the landing. Having the pavement bring the engines to a sudden stop can cause all sorts of bad things to happen. A suddenly stopped prop can twist an entire airframe on a single engine plane. I have no clue what it could do on a twin, but I think I would agree with that pilot, who seemed to have survived just fine with his method.

John
 
John Baker said:
He did not cut the engines until he flared fro the landing. Having the pavement bring the engines to a sudden stop can cause all sorts of bad things to happen. A suddenly stopped prop can twist an entire airframe on a single engine plane. I have no clue what it could do on a twin, but I think I would agree with that pilot, who seemed to have survived just fine with his method.

John
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I think there is agreement that killing the engine can reduce the damage to the engine, prop, and possibly airframe. The question is really whether or not it is a good idea to do so.

There have been several gear up emergencies where the pilot killed the engine and then stalled, spun or came up short and ended up dead.

There (so far) have been no cases of a pilot getting dead in a gear up emergency when the engine was left running and the landing was executed otherwise normally.
 
For me, with all my 360 hours of vast experience, it would be hard for me to predict exactly what I would do until the moment of truth. Hopefully, that moment will never arrive. I think it would have a whole lot to do with wx conditions at the airport at that time.

John
 
COFlyBoy said:
There (so far) have been no cases of a pilot getting dead in a gear up emergency when the engine was left running and the landing was executed otherwise normally.
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Do you have a credible source for that statement? In any case, I firmly believe in pulling the mixture(s) prior to touchdown and I think feathering a twin's props at the same time would at the very least reduce the potential for an engine tearing out of it's mount which could lead to a fire. I would hold of on killing engines until the landing was "assured". And FWIW, I don't think a go around from the flare or beyond would be a good idea during a gear up landing because it might be difficult to tell if the props had already contacted the ground. Doesn't anyone else see a difference between stopping props on final vs over the runway? The former definitely carries a risk of coming up short, the latter doesn't.
 
gismo said:
I think feathering a twin's props at the same time would at the very least reduce the potential for an engine tearing out of it's mount which could lead to a fire.
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Do you have any credible evidence of THAT ever happening? I can't see an engine at idle having enough rotating mass (inertia) to do that.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
Do you have any credible evidence of THAT ever happening? I can't see an engine at idle having enough rotating mass (inertia) to do that.
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I'm wondering the same thing. People gear up airplanes all the time (by mistake) and I haven't heard of many engines ripping themselves off the mount causing a post-landing fire.
 
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