They Rolled the Equipment

AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Feb 24, 2005
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Montgomery County PA
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Display name:
Adam Zucker
Well I had a little excitment on my local flight this evening. I am headed up to the Cooperstown Area with a pilot friend and our spouses this weekend for a Bar conference. My friend and I decided to do some air work and T&Gs in the Lance since it had been so long since we flew it. I also needed a referesher with the Bendix GPS as I am used to the Garmins.

We did a extra through preflite and even confirmed we had the emergency procedures check list and confirmed extinguisher and emergency gear extender lever. Don't know why just did.

We left KLOM for KPNE a towered field about 12nm away We did two T&Gs no problem fly back to Wings and go through the landing check list. Blah Blah Blah Gear acutator down. Ut on no little green lights. ReCycle the gear lever... Nothing. Ok maintain altitude and discuss procedures and options.

1) Gear lever down no green lights but we think it is down. - Call Wings Unicom as for visual confirmation of under carriage on low approach. No one answers. sigh.

2) Fly back to KPNE advise Tower of situation. Tower sets us up for low approach (This time we know our gear is not down) Asks typical questions how many on board how much fuel. Now here is the kicker; we told the FBO to top it off before we left. GREAT if this gear won't come down we will be circling this field for almost 5 hours and I just had a soda.

3)Tower sent us pretty far north east so we had lots of time to review emergency procedures and options. Bob flew and I did the check lists and reviewed options If the gear is down we fly home with gear extened. If gear is up we try emergency gear extension procedure if it works we fly back to wings with gear extened. If gear fails to extend on emergency procedure we better have something to talk about for the next 4.5 hours while we fly round and round and round to deplete fuel.

Since I had sooo much time I thought about several things. I have to be honest. I really felt very comfortable and in control. Now perhaps for most of you this may be no big deal. Certainly nothing near what Bryon experienced, for me lets just say it was a first. Anyway some very odd things went through my head they are:

1) I told my wife I'd be home in an hour she is going to kill me
2) I can't have the tower call my wife or she will deficate a brick
3)Thank G-d I packed a three pack of those travel johns in my flight bag in anticipation of my trip this weekend.
4)Hey I'll have something interesting to post on POA and AOPA when I get back.
5) I better not screw this up or the gurus on the board will draw and quater me.
6) Wow that is an awful lot of fire trucks for just two guys in a piper

Anyway we set up for the first low approach.
We see an airport truck cruise toward the runway we come in Low tower tells us gear is UP and that he has rolled the equipment. Never asked him to but he did it anyway. Up we go and advise on left down wind for 24 we will preform the emergency gear extension procedure. We decide that Bob will fly I will do the procedure check list again and lower the emergency extension lever.
1) Master on-check
2)Instrument lights off in day light - check
3)Circuit breakers - check ( We tried to recycle the breaker as well to no avail)
4)Gear actuator level down-check
5) Gear not down
5)Slow aircraft to less than 87kts
6) Attempt emergency gear deployment
We pull the lever and wait and wait and wait and wait NOTHING Aw shi^. Hmmm lets try pushing the lever:wait wait CLUNK CLUNK wait CLUNK yeehaw three in the green Eggggselent! We do another low approach to confirm. Lots of flashing equipment on the ground. Tower confrims gear down and we advise will depart and return to Wings. Where we obvously landed safely. FBO couldn't have been better to us. Looks like it is the Gear motor which apparently goes between 4000 and 5000 hours plane was at 4500 Tach time.

Lessons learned:
1) Procedure is your friend
2) We both agreed it was better to be at a field with a tower and more services ( if possible ) if we had to belly it in
3) Use the services avaiable to you ie ATC Tower
4) As Bruce said in my other post Ain't nothing like knocking he rust off.
5) fly the plane
6) Use the check list
7) Procedure is still your friend.

I have to say that knowing there was a procedure to follow and following that procedure was very comforting .
 
AdamZ said:
Well I had a little excitment on my local flight this evening.
Lessons learned:
1) Procedure is your friend
2) We both agreed it was better to be at a field with a tower and more services ( if possible ) if we had to belly it in
3) Use the services avaiable to you ie ATC Tower
4) As Bruce said in my other post Ain't nothing like knocking he rust off.
5) fly the plane
6) Use the check list
7) Procedure is still your friend.

I have to say that knowing there was a procedure to follow and following that procedure was very comforting .
Click to expand...
Good on you! I have flown Mooneys (there are five reports of the Johnson Bar BREAKING OFF, then you are screwed), Cessna retracts (Only if I must- no hydraulic fluid=no alternate gear procedure), Beech, and I gotta say, I love my Piper Gravity drop gear. BLEED the remaining pressure, they fall down into place.

Procedure, procedure, procedure. And in this case, fuel and time are your friends. (Also the Urinal....sigh).
 
Huh, nice story and well handled. (we would not have thrashed you if you screwed up!) The service life limits is the one thing that could have helped. I should start selling my excel spreadsheet "Predictive Maintenance Events". It lists all the things I think will go, and when. The goal is to predict well, and then stay ahead. Its not perfect but would have caught the 4500hr thing if it was well known.
 
PS does it say in the manual not to land gear up with a certain amount of fuel on board? Or is that one of those 'prudent decision' things? I honestly have not heard of it. You hear of airlliners burning off fuel to return but I think that is usually a max ramp weigh problem.
 
Sounds like quite an experience, glad everything worked out and the plane is still in one piece!

Excellent job!
 
Great job .... I remember that I had an instructor that told me in an emergency the first thing you should do is... wind the clock. His point was "almost" all failures in a plane take a while to develop and you should always fall back to procedures and checklists.. and do them over and over. Sounds like you could have taught the class.

I had my gear motor go out several years ago while I was bringing my brother-in-law's daughters back to him. He was a pilot and had come to the airport early so he heard me have to divert to work on the gear... scared him a lot more than us! I did make one mistake... I didn't pull the circuit breaker and after I landed the gear motor woke up and tried to cycle... in a Comanche you disconnect the motor screw to drop the gear with an emergency lever,- but the disconnected motor still bent a part trying to drive against nothing on the ground. Made a $200 repair into a $400 one....
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
PS does it say in the manual not to land gear up with a certain amount of fuel on board? Or is that one of those 'prudent decision' things? I honestly have not heard of it. You hear of airlliners burning off fuel to return but I think that is usually a max ramp weigh problem.
Click to expand...

Dave: Good question. I don't know the answer to that. We used a check list and did not revert to the POA. Our decision to burn off fuel if the gear didn't extend was what we felt was the prudent thing to do. I had images of puncturing a wing on something, perhaps a runway light if we slid and then sparks flying up from the belly or wings while it ground against the runway. It is amazing what you remember when you drill things into your head. Even though it was not on the check list I was thinking what I would use to prop the door open prior to bellying it in, just incase the frame got bent and we couldn't open the door. Procdure is great.

Ironically and as an aside the guy that owned the plane JUST got it back from the paint shop yesterday:eek:
 
Good job, Adam. I think I might have made a precautionary landing at the towered field with the equipment, since my gear was an unknown quantity (albeit with three green lights---now). Since they had the equipment out and ready, if (god forbid) there WAS still a problem, I would have had help. But that's me... I'm chicken!! :-)

Nice story, thanks for sharing. I've only had one in-flight emergency--the CO2 card turned BLACK all at once about 10 minutes into an IFR flight. Called ATC, reported the problem, got vectors to the nearest VFR airport (I had a GPS, but was in radar contact and letting HIM figure out where the airport was seemed more prudent... fly the airplane, fly the airplane). Was on the ground with a passenger who had a bad headache just a few minutes later.

Like you, I found I was not nervous during the event, although I always thought I would be if an "event" happened in flight.
 
Nice job, Adam.

Be glad you had it happen now, and not with the ladies on board.

I just got done having the gear actuators rebuilt. It's always something.
 
wsuffa said:
Be glad you had it happen now, and not with the ladies on board.
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Man, Bill you aren't kidding. Bob and I ( having forgotten we have an ISO switch) we discussing after the fact how we could get the wives to take off their headsets so we could have done trouble shooting with out them freaking out. Ah honey were getting a lot of feed back up hear would you mind unplugging back there;)
 
Great you got the gear down and made it a non event! Procedure, procedure....

Never be afraid to call the equipment if someone else doesn't beat you to it. We had someone from the airport fire dept at one of the safety meetings a while back. He said don't even hesitate to call them out. The reason he gave: They'd rather drive out to be in position and ready for someone for a non event landing every day instead of having to rush out once and jump into a post crash mess after the fact. He said time for preplanning goes a long way on both ends of an emergency.
 
Adam, this is singularly the very best wording in your entire post:


I really felt very comfortable and in control.
Click to expand...

Not that your post wasn't worthy of reading, it was, but that one sentence really says it all when talking about the mark of an aviator.

I can't believe no one has yet asked if you were waiting for the pick up and the stick;)
 
Adam,


Great handling of the situation. I am glad everything worked out. A good lesson for everyone. Don't be in a hurry to make things worse than they are. Use the checklists. Great use of CRM. Job well done. Thanks for sharing.
 
AdamZ said:
Now here is the kicker; we told the FBO to top it off before we left.
Click to expand...

BZ, Adam, good job. And, having lots of gas gave you guys plenty of time to methodically work through the problem. Unless useful load demands it, I can think of few reasons to leave fuel on the truck.

Too bad the media never reports good pilots having good outcomes.
 
Nice job!

I'm so GLAD that you weren't in my local paper today.
 
Well done Adam. Staying cool under pressure as you did, is probably the most important "technique" for a situation like you had.

BTW, it sounds like this might have been your first "opportunity" to try the emergency gear extension procedure. For the rest of you folks who fly retractables, a practice emergency extension or two will go a long way towards reducing the cockpit temperature if and when it becomes necessary to perform the task for real.
 
Cessna retracts (Only if I must- no hydraulic fluid=no alternate gear procedure)[/QUOTE]Umm, well, there is, but it's not in the book, and it requires that you have had a lot of coffee to drink and know where the reservoir is, and yes, it's been done and it works. You just don't want to be the mechanic who has to drain and flush the system (is there an emoticon for "yuk!"?).


(Ugh. Ron, I apologize, I hit the wrong button and rather than get a reply, I edited part of this message out in error. My apologies. Not enough coffee this AM. Sigh. Bruce)
 
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Ron Levy said:
Umm, well, there is, but it's not in the book, and it requires that you have had a lot of coffee to drink and know where the reservoir is, and yes, it's been done and it works. You just don't want to be the mechanic who has to drain and flush the system (is there an emoticon for "yuk!"?).

At any rate, good job "by the book," Adam. As far as fuel on board, I've never seen a plane catch fire on a controlled gear-up landing, so burning down the fuel is at best a precautionary maneuver based on the "you never have too much fuel unless you're on fire" rule. In fact, the military stopped foaming the runways for gear-up landings because there were never any fires and they were doing more damage to the engines due to foam ingestion than they were saving on the airframes.
Click to expand...


I know where the reservoir is in the Cutlass that I rent. My aim is not that good ;) I'd probably short the panel out trying that "fluid replacement".

I'm with Dr. Bruce, not a huge fan of cessna retracts that cannot be gotten down after a fluid loss.

Good job, Adam. Really good job.

Jim G
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
PS does it say in the manual not to land gear up with a certain amount of fuel on board? Or is that one of those 'prudent decision' things? I honestly have not heard of it. You hear of airlliners burning off fuel to return but I think that is usually a max ramp weigh problem.
Click to expand...

Less fuel=less fire when things go wrong. There is also less weight upon touchdown, although those Piper bellys slide down the runway pretty well.
 
Adam,

Nice job. Good write up.

Bruce,

bbchien said:
Good on you! I have flown Mooneys (there are five reports of the Johnson Bar BREAKING OFF, then you are screwed),
Click to expand...

Frac!

Do you happen to know where the break occurs so I can go take a look.

Thanks,

Len
 
When getting checked out in the club's Arrow a few years ago we had a gear failure. Getting set up for slow flight I selected gear down, kept reducing power, dropped the flaps, and then my CFI and I looked at each other. Did you feel the gear go down? No. Three green lights? No. Gee, the switch is down. We didn't waste any time. Emergency gear extention check list out. Check circuit breakers. Yup, one is popped. Pushed it in and the gear went down. Lesson over, we fly home with the gear down. Let the A&P figure out why the breaker popped (never did). On a later flight we tested the rest of the process - push down on the emergency extention lever to blow the pressure in the hydraulic system that holds the gear up. Down it went, no problem. I'm like Ron, I like the dirt simple Piper emergency extention system. Leak in the hydraulics? No problem, the gear is coming down on its own.
 
AdamZ said:
...we come in Low tower tells us gear is UP and that he has rolled the equipment. Never asked him to but he did it anyway.
Click to expand...

Well done, if you just keep running through options, eventually something will usually work. As to the above, I've been asked three times if I wanted equipment rolled, I always said yes, even on a simple OEI approach, made and in VMC. Heck, I could potentially screw the pooch. Never needed them, but they never seemed pi**ed for rolling and not being needed, always real nice.
 
Adam;

Very well done and yes those procedures/check listsdo work so well. Your calmness and knowing there was lots of fuel on board helped make the arrival a safe one.

John
 
Len Lanetti said:
Adam,

Nice job. Good write up.

Bruce,



Frac!

Do you happen to know where the break occurs so I can go take a look.

Thanks,

Len
Click to expand...
It was down at the bottom where it's welded to the jackshaft. Charlie Dugosh always examined that spot very, very carefully. Actually did a Dye penetrant on my 68 "F", cause he didn't like how it looked.
 
Ghery said:
Leak in the hydraulics? No problem
Click to expand...

I too like the Piper gear system in the Arrow, Seneca, etc...note the following which was imparted to me as part of my commerical training in an ArrowIII...the hydraulic pump is under the rear seat near the battery...the pump runs anytime hydraulic pressure falls below a certain level...anytime the pump runs the yellow light on the panel lights...if there is a leak on the pressurized side the pump will activate to restore the pressure level. If the leak is near the pump which is near the battery the pump may be spraying atomized hydraulic fluid which is inflammable (ie easily catches on fire) in that area.

I could never find a report of an accident attributed to this but a long time instructor I respect assured me it has happened.

If the pump is running during cruise flight when it shouldn't be best to take a look at it ASAP.

Len
 
Len Lanetti said:
Adam,

Nice job. Good write up.

Bruce,



Frac!

Do you happen to know where the break occurs so I can go take a look.

Thanks,

Len
Click to expand...

Battlestar Galactica fan?
 
I'm really surprised no one else has brought this up. In the Lance, the gear configuration and hardware choices Piper made would have made this problem impossible if you had filed a flight plan.

:)
 
Len Lanetti said:
I too like the Piper gear system in the Arrow, Seneca, etc...note the following which was imparted to me as part of my commerical training in an ArrowIII...the hydraulic pump is under the rear seat near the battery...the pump runs anytime hydraulic pressure falls below a certain level...anytime the pump runs the yellow light on the panel lights...if there is a leak on the pressurized side the pump will activate to restore the pressure level. If the leak is near the pump which is near the battery the pump may be spraying atomized hydraulic fluid which is inflammable (ie easily catches on fire) in that area.

I could never find a report of an accident attributed to this but a long time instructor I respect assured me it has happened.

If the pump is running during cruise flight when it shouldn't be best to take a look at it ASAP.

Len
Click to expand...

My Commander has a very similar system.

I just got done having all the 'O' rings in the actuators replaced. 25+ years isn't bad. Discovered the problem because the pump was cycling every 3 seconds, indicating a pressure leak, traced to the actuators. O-rings were shot. I will assure you that the first flight after that maintenance caused a little puckering. Reherse/practice emergency down procedures.

There have been a couple of cases where pinhole leaks have occurred in the tubing where it runs behind the panel, leading to a fine mist of hyd fluid in the plane. Not cool. Some planes have pullable breakers for the pump, some don't. So, Len, it's possible for it to happen in the back of the plane, near the battery. I think, though, that the vented battery box and sealed solenoid relays should be pretty fair at addressing any issues. At least on my plane. Autopilot servos are a different ball of wax, though.

BTW, you can burn out the hyd. pump if it runs too long. $1200+ to rebuild, Kelly Aerospace is the primary vendor - and their reputation is pretty poor in terms of reliability and quality. Note that there is an (almost) identical unit made for marine use, new cost a couple of hundred bucks.
 
grattonja said:
not a huge fan of cessna retracts that cannot be gotten down after a fluid loss.
Click to expand...
Then there are the multiengine Cessna retracts (310 and 320, at least, and maybe others) where the nosegear extends forward against the airflow. If the rod that pushes the nosegear forward bends or breaks the emergency extension procedure won't work. BTDT in the plane in the avatar. Didn't even consider the Jeep trick at the time and wouldn't today either. LOL.
 
Len Lanetti said:
If the pump is running during cruise flight when it shouldn't be best to take a look at it ASAP. Len
Click to expand...
If it runs during cruise flight, the procedure is to pull the breaker. If the gear start to come down, they start to come down.

In the Seneca if you then lose an engine, you push the breaker back in as it will not climb (above 4000 lbs) with the gear out. No Way.
 
Adam thanks for the post,well written and very informative, BTW thanks for not being in the paper too. Glad everything worked out. Dave G.
 
I have had a couple gaer failures, they really aren't a big deal. Just take your time, and run the checklist, as you did.

Also, remember that landing with the gear up almost always results in no injuries and minimal damage. Infact, I can't ever even remember hearing of serious injuries when a plane lands gear up.
 
I saw on T.V. one time where the same thing happened. The way they got it down was to have the plane fly just off the tarmack while a couple of guys standing up in the bed of a pickup truck doing about 80 mph pulled it down by hand. It locked in and the plane was able to land without incident.

Dakota Duce

"May All Your Flights Be Of Good Weather!"
 
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