T-38 Gear up

Beale jet. A-model. Wasn't me, I'm still procuring potable water from ice cubes and snow in the backyard, flying is the last thing on my plate right now.

At any rate, looks like a fairly benign belly landing. We will see if it was a gear collapse, inadvertent gear up, or purposeful gear-up landing (perfectly legal, and with a great accomplished success record btw) for mechanical reasons. The article says hard landing, but I'd take that with a grain of salt, as they're only talking with AF PA, and those folks don't have a clue when it comes to flightline ops (and we prefer it that way).

Provided the wing spars and spar-fuse attachments (a lot of spendy unobtanium honeycomb stuff on these assemblies) aren't trashed due to a legitimate aircraft-totaling gear-collapsing high sink rate impact, that thing will be flying in 2 weeks.

In the case of purposeful gear ups, procedure has us throw the speed brakes out and land normally. The speed brakes grind down, the flaps, belly doors crunch and scrape. The airplane gets puts on jacks, lowered, pinned, towed, speed brake skids replaced, belly panels and gear doors IRAN, flaps reskinned. Done. Crazy the first time I saw it, one FCF flight and you're G2G. Repairs are even done in house, since any skin/panel R/R work is below depot level. Good times. Now back to collecting grass water and defecating in a box in the garage. Cheers!
 
Last edited:
hindsight2020 said:
Beale jet. A-model. Wasn't me, I'm still procuring potable water from ice cubes and snow in the backyard, flying is the last thing on my plate right now.

At any rate, looks like a fairly benign belly landing. We will see if it was a gear collapse, inadvertent gear up, or purposeful gear-up landing (perfectly legal, and with a great accomplished success record btw) for mechanical reasons. The article says hard landing, but I'd take that with a grain of salt, as they're only talking with AF PA, and those folks don't have a clue when it comes to flightline ops (and we prefer it that way).

Provided the wing spars and spar-fuse attachments (a lot of spendy unobtanium honeycomb stuff on these assemblies) aren't trashed due to a legitimate aircraft-totaling gear-collapsing high sink rate impact, that thing will be flying in 2 weeks.

In the case of purposeful gear ups, procedure has us throw the speed brakes out and land normally. The speed brakes grind down, the flaps, belly doors crunch and scrape. The airplane gets puts on jacks, lowered, pinned, towed, speed brake skids replaced, belly panels and gear doors IRAN, flaps reskinned. Done. Crazy the first time I saw it, one FCF flight and you're G2G. Repairs are even done in house, since any skin/panel R/R work is below depot level. Good times. Now back to collecting grass water and defecating in a box in the garage. Cheers!
Click to expand...

Okay, now I'm quite curious. Why would one do a purposeful gear up?
 
jimhorner said:
Okay, now I'm quite curious. Why would one do a purposeful gear up?
Click to expand...

Most likely because you only got 2, not 3 green lights and don't want to put a jet fighter down on 2 wheels going 125 knots or whatever. You're not gonna get hurt if you belly land it on the runway. If you go off-road on 2 wheels, you might end up upside down AND on fire.
 
jimhorner said:
Okay, now I'm quite curious. Why would one do a purposeful gear up?
Click to expand...

Tons of reasons, where to begin?

1) Let's see.....because the gear won't come down at all? That'd be the obvious one.

2) There are certain malfunctions that prevent the system from releasing, some are hydraulic, some are electric. The alternate gear extension checklist in the T-38 is quite extensive for a small jet. It's also quite inventive and nutty; it even involves killing all electrics if you go far enough down the "what now?" list. Go far enough down and it has you shutting down a certain engine even! Talk about "do no harm" lol. :D

2a) In practice, we haven't got that far down the checklist in the last couple decades. Usually the limfac is gas, and qual of occupants on board. Being a trainer, it's not always flown by IPs on board. When we have unqualified dudes (undergrads mostly), they won't be asked to accomplish the 'test-piloty' steps of that checklist, command section will direct them to land gear up instead. Our last one at RND involved an IFF jet, and those guys are always coming back to the pattern one to a full stopper, so the dude didn't have the gas to fully troubleshoot before reaching emergency fuel, so the decision was made to just land gear up. The aircraft flew the next week.

3) Lastly, there's gear configuration combinations that are not legal nor safe for us to land, which forces (by tech order) an ejection decision instead. As such, having the ability to get all gear up (if able, not always possible to revert to clean configuration, especially if hydraulics have been de-powered and uplocks already released and one of the gear already over-center), which would re-open up the option of landing all gear-up. The latter is of course preferred as it avoids the hull loss, damage to property and loss of life by bystanders on the ground, and the potential loss of life if the ejection sequence were to fail, which is always a risk and has unfortunately happened recently (in the Viper).
 
Last edited:
kyleb said:
Most likely because you only got 2, not 3 green lights and don't want to put a jet fighter down on 2 wheels going 125 knots or whatever. You're not gonna get hurt if you belly land it on the runway. If you go off-road on 2 wheels, you might end up upside down AND on fire.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

As to the bolded, I got a chuckle. Try 185 KCAS over the fence heavy, or 195KCAS flaps-up (after burning down 500#)

There's a reason we share approach category with this guy....
7dTs.gif

:eek::D
 
Last edited:
hindsight2020 said:
Tons of reasons, where to begin?

1) Let's see.....because the gear won't come down at all? That'd be the obvious one.

2) There are certain malfunctions that prevent the system from releasing, some are hydraulic, some are electric. The alternate gear extension checklist in the T-38 is quite extensive for a small jet. It's also quite inventive and nutty; it even involves killing all electrics if you go far enough down the "what now?" list. Go far enough down and it has you shutting down a certain engine even! Talk about "do no harm" lol. :D

2a) In practice, we haven't got that far down the checklist in the last couple decades. Usually the limfac is gas, and qual of occupants on board. Being a trainer, it's not always flown by IPs on board. When we have unqualified dudes (undergrads mostly), they won't be asked to accomplish the 'test-piloty' steps of that checklist, command section will direct them to land gear up instead. Our last one at RND involved an IFF jet, and those guys are always coming back to the pattern one to a full stopper, so the dude didn't have the gas to fully troubleshoot before reaching emergency fuel, so the decision was made to just land gear up. The aircraft flew the next week.

3) Lastly, there's gear configuration combinations that are not legal nor safe for us to land, which forces (by tech order) an ejection decision instead. As such, having the ability to get all gear up (if able, not always possible to revert to clean configuration, especially if hydraulics have been de-powered and uplocks already released and one of the gear already over-center), which would re-open up the option of landing all gear-up. The latter is of course preferred as it avoids the hull loss, damage to property and loss of life by bystanders on the ground, and the potential loss of life if the ejection sequence were to fail, which is always a risk and has unfortunately happened recently (in the Viper).
Click to expand...

Oh, I see. You're talking about landings knowing that the landing gear is up but not being able to do anything about it. The word "purposeful" had me going down the path of "let's decide not to put the gear down even though we could and land anyway." That, I couldn't really wrap my head around. Landing knowing that the gear is up and won't come down... yeah, that's "purposeful", but my brain wasn't going that way.

I had an electrical issue with my gear one time. It wouldn't come down the normal way. If the emergency extension procedure hadn't worked, I guess I would have made a purposeful gear up landing as well. "San Jose Tower, which of these lovely 10000 ft runways do you want me to close?"

Upon further reflection, I realize that I too have made another kind of purposeful gear up landing. I've logged 69 landings so far with the gear retracted. In fact, I made sure to confirm the gear was up before each and every one of those landings.
 
Last edited:
“Hard Landing” reminds me of the first report I got one Saturday of the YF—22 gear up at Edwards AFB. Reported to me as a Hard Landing by the Test Force. It also was on its gear the same day and looked almost new (minus the Canopy that was blown for a rapid egress of the Pilot).

Cheers
 
hindsight2020 said:
Indeed.

As to the bolded, I got a chuckle. Try 185 KCAS over the fence heavy, or 195KCAS flaps-up (after burning down 1000#)

:eek::D
Click to expand...

At first I thought "Hmm, 150 knots? 175 knots? I know they come down fast, but no way." So I went with 125.
 
TA-4J Skyhawks, we kept drop tanks on ALL the time. Inadvertent gear up even MORE benign. Jack up off tanks, drop gear, replace tanks! That’s it!

Story is one guy realized he forgot gear, initiated go around and managed to scrape the tanks. A touch and go gear up!

Tools
 
kyleb said:
At first I thought "Hmm, 150 knots? 175 knots? I know they come down fast, but no way." So I went with 125.
Click to expand...

To be clear, full flare touchdown speeds will be -25 from my aforementioned figures, 1G stall circa -30. But, average pilot technique and dexterity has most unqualified/inexperienced pilots touching down hot, circa -10 from reference speed, especially no-flaps. -15 is considered the land-fast limit acceptable threshold for checkride credit fwiw. Students bungle it up as fast as approach-speed (-0) touchdowns. So directional control can get sporty, especially if an abort is called for.

Our main tires are rated to the low 200s GS, nose tire high 100s GS. We accept the nose tire could get spotted/shredded in an emergency 3-point attitude (single engine go attitude) when heavy, since reference speeds exceed nosewheel ground speed limit. Otherwise, it's student execution error that could lead to tire damage.

Crazy business. The T-7A will actually be considerably slower on the takeoff/landing front.. Mostly healthier wing area and lift/drag device automation, plus that F404 is gonna be sick when bolted to a sleek, trainer variant non-stores fuse. When it comes to the history of our jet trainers, these crazy Century Series era contraptions will always remain the equalizers. I always get a chuckle how non-chalant the AF training manuals were when the thing first came out. It was considered gentle (when viewed from the perspective of an F-104 follow-on). Yikes. Then it killed a bunch of people in the final turn in the 60s-70s, and we had to cuff how we flew it in the pattern, plus create recurrent training stall/AHC programs for students and IPs alike. It's not a hamburger helper hands trainer like the T-6/PC-21 or the COTS stuff some of the Euros and Indo-Pac are flying (T-100s, Yak-130s et al). This thing is squirrely when slow.

I welcome the T-7 if for no other reason we never really needed to kill people just to demonstrate they couldn't handle a follow-on fighter, latter with milder handling characteristics mind you. It's time to move on, but Boeing......digressing.
 
hindsight2020 said:
As to the bolded, I got a chuckle. Try 185 KCAS over the fence heavy, or 195KCAS flaps-up (after burning down 1000#)
Click to expand...
Thanks for your posts, gave me a clear picture of what could have happened

jimhorner said:
I've logged 69 landings so far with the gear retracted. In fact, I made sure to confirm the gear was up before each and every one of those landings.
Click to expand...
??? I don't understand.
 
Tools said:
TA-4J Skyhawks, we kept drop tanks on ALL the time. Inadvertent gear up even MORE benign. Jack up off tanks, drop gear, replace tanks! That’s it!

Story is one guy realized he forgot gear, initiated go around and managed to scrape the tanks. A touch and go gear up!

Tools
Click to expand...

Your post brought back memories of my two years at NAS Kingsville, where I was the general superintendent for the construction of a jet engine test cell. Back then TW-2 aircraft were the TA-4J Skyhawk and the T-2 Buckeye.

Being the airplane geek I am, watching the stodgy T-2 and sleek TA-4J fly every day along with transient F-14s, A-6s, and other naval aircraft made my day-to-day job enjoyable. The job site was close to the Runway 13L/13R thresholds, and when an airshow featuring the Blue Angels came to town, I parked a backhoe facing the runway with the front loader bucket elevated to its maximum height. I climbed up to my perch with a small chair, and enjoyed the show.

:D
 
3393RP said:
when an airshow featuring the Blue Angels came to town, I parked a backhoe facing the runway with the front loader bucket elevated to its maximum height. I climbed up to my perch with a small chair, and enjoyed the show.
Click to expand...

I believe your redneck is showing there a little..!! :lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top