C182RG Gear UP

bjohnson

bjohnson

Line Up and Wait
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They have a video interview of the pilot. Looks like both electric and manual pump failed to lower gear.
 
Tony knows all about this.
 
bjohnson said:
They have a video interview of the pilot. Looks like both electric and manual pump failed to lower gear.
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I can't download the video yet so I don't know exactly what type of gear malfunction he had

In the C172 and 182 RG if there is a hydraulic leak you are not going to get the gear down. The pump handle is to manually pump hydraulic fluid into the cylinders, that is different than some other types of gear where the handle is a mechanical linkage. So that is one possibility.

Another could be something like what Tony experienced where some pins sheared and prevented the nose gear from coming down.

There is also a chance that one the mains if the tire was spinning fast enough when retracted it could have wedged itself into the wheel well because the tire was expanded out due to centrifugal force or something else could have jammed them up.
 
Scott the gear was hanging down but not locked. It was swinging forward and backward.
 
Last edited:
jesse said:
Tony knows all about this.
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hey ya something im an expert at! if the ends justify the means the guy did a good job. looks like the nosegear was down and locked. i dont think i wouldve went for the grass but it turned out ok for him. i also would suspect some sort of hydraulic fluid issue. perhaps there was enough left to get the nose gear down but not the mains. I dont understand the reasoning or wisdom of pulling Gs to lower the gear while also doing a low pass over the runway. looks like he shut the engine down after touchdown, something i wish i had done.
 
I almost landed gear up in a 182RG. I'm glad I didn't. It would have messed up the vertical stabilizer something awful!

:D
 
smigaldi said:
In the C172 and 182 RG if there is a hydraulic leak you are not going to get the gear down. The pump handle is to manually pump hydraulic fluid into the cylinders, that is different than some other types of gear where the handle is a mechanical linkage. So that is one possibility.
Click to expand...
It is possible to add other fluid in the case of a hydraulic fluid loss that could get the gear down on a one time basis. Extra engine oil, water, juice, etc. There is even one case I know of where the pilot and passengers had a small, unnoticed hydraulic leak and were able to get the gear down by adding urine to the reservior. Knowing where the reserviour is located this could not have been easy to do in the air.:yes:
 
From the video I saw, the mains appeared to be dangling free of any mechanical limits. In the porpoising he was doing, they were swinging like a free pendulum.

On touchdown, they (hanging lower than the nose gear) struck the ground first and bounced nearly back into the wells. Hmmm...

Very good landing anyway.
 
NC Pilot said:
It is possible to add other fluid in the case of a hydraulic fluid loss that could get the gear down on a one time basis. Extra engine oil, water, juice, etc. There is even one case I know of where the pilot and passengers had a small, unnoticed hydraulic leak and were able to get the gear down by adding urine to the reservior. Knowing where the reserviour is located this could not have been easy to do in the air.:yes:
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I've heard this as well. However, the gyrations I have to go thru to check the fluid while on the ground makes me believe there's probably no way I could add any fluid in the air.
 
accessing the hydraulic reservoir involves pretty much tearing the floor apart doesnt it?
 
sounds about right, i vaguely remember during the annuals when it has been accessed. seemed like lots of panels had to be removed.
 
The 172RG reservoir was about centerline under the panel on the floor, up against the firewall. Dipstick was accessed (at least the easiest way I found) by standing on the ground outside the pilot's door, laying on my right shoulder on the floor and reaching in and around with my left hand. But, I just realized I have no idea where the fill cap on the reserviour is... oops!
 
smigaldi said:
I am trying to remember but I think it is under the instrument panel on the right side of the center, lower panel (the one with the trim wheel).
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Yep, that is where it is. I was always having to add fluid on the 182RG I flew, built a special bottle with a hose to put it in easily.
 
Ok, I know I knew this once, but tell me again, why is pavement preferred to grass for doing gear up landings? Is it because of the lower chance of the pavement "grabbing" the plane and causing a noseover?
 
thats pretty much it chuck. and if you do it right, you will slide a lot less further on pavement than grass. i doubt theres much difference in damage, the weight still has to be supported somewhere.
 
Well, it got worldwide coverage. The taxi taking us to our meeting this morning in Taipei had a TV screen in the dash (try THAT at home) and just as he lost the signal going into the meeting location they were showing the video. The main gear was really flopping around.

Quite a lot of coverage for a non-event.
 
One of the guys on the CPA board has a story where they lost all hydraulic fluid and were able to get the gear down and locked using the aircraft tow bar.

I'll see if it is OK to post his story.
 
i can see opening door and grabbing mains. how did they do the nose? crazy...
 
tonycondon said:
i can see opening door and grabbing mains. how did they do the nose? crazy...
Click to expand...
Here is his story offered without comment:

EMERGENCY PROCEDURES
A Saturday Flight Provides More Excitement Than Planned​
​
A pilot's success depends, among other things, on inventiveness. Navy pilots who must make it back to a ship before they can land have a phrase that says, "Never, never, never, never give up!" At this moment those words rang in my head.

It started as a normal checkout flight for any pilot in a new aircraft, except that this was also an interview of a candidate for a new flight instructor position with the company. As the company mechanic I had no business reason to go on this flight but I went along as an observer to watch my partner performing the interview and also just for a nice Saturday flight. We had the applicant, Scott, perform many maneuvers and we were proceeding to the emergency procedures phase of the flight. In a complex aircraft there a two types of failures that are easy to simulate. The first is an engine failure, where the instructor (my partner in this case) throttles the engine back to idle and tells the pilot, "Okay, your engine just died. What is the procedure?" The correct action includes maintaining the best airspeed for glide and finding a place to land and so on. The other failure is a landing gear pump failure that is simulated by pulling out the circuit breaker for the gear pump motor. The pilot must recognize that the wheels have not extended and then use the emergency extension pump which is a hand pump located in the floor between the two front seats.

I was enjoying the flight and didn't notice that my partner, Richard, had pulled the breaker for the gear pump. When Scott throttled back to descend the landing gear warning horn came on. He aborted the approach and started pumping the gear down by hand. This normally takes twenty to thirty pumps of the handle and there is considerable resistance as the gear is quite heavy. After about seven pumps, there was a loud clunk and the handle suddenly moved with no resistance at all.

We looked at each other as the control tower asked if we were coming around for another approach. We told them that we had some kind of malfunction and we were departing the area to figure it out. The first thing we tried was to re-raise the gear to see if it was stuck. Rich selected gear up and pushed in the circuit breaker for the main pump which then started to retract the gear. He again selected gear down and we could hear the electric pump freewheeling as the gear remained half way down.

I should take just a moment to explain the landing gear in this type of high-wing aircraft. In most low-wing aircraft the gear swings on a simple hinge into the wing and into the nose. In a high-wing aircraft this is impractical and so while the nose gear does swing forward into the nose, the main gear is different. In the normal 'down' position the gear is pointing out to the sides of the fuselage. During the first part of retraction, the gear swings DOWN so that it is hanging vertically from the fuselage and then swings up and aft into the rear of the belly. Extension is the opposite with gravity helping the gear swing down out of the belly and then hydraulic power to lift the gear out to the side of the plane. Once in place there are small hooks that are spring loaded and can hold the gear down and locked if the pressure bleeds down.

Richard turned to me and said, "Mechanic, fix plane. Now!" I couldn't tell what was wrong from the back seat so Scott, who had been sitting in the right seat crawled in back and I took his chair up front. The only tool I had available to me was actually the fuel sampler which has a screw driver tip on it. I began removing the shroud around the emergency pump handle so that I could see underneath the floor. There is about a seven inch space between the flat load floor and the rounded belly of the aircraft. In that space I saw about two inches of hydraulic fluid sloshing around. I reached down and felt the under side of the emergency pump to try to find a broken piece. My hand came back coated with red hydraulic fluid and I told my partner, "This is NOT good."

About now the control tower realized that we might need some help and asked the question no pilot wants to hear, "Sir could you tell us the number of souls on board and hours of fuel remaining?"

"Three on board and about five and a half hours of gas," we replied, as I began removing more pieces of the floor. I had Rich lift up his feet as I pulled out the carpeting and had Scott place it in the cargo compartment. With more of the inspection panels removed from the floor, I estimated that there was about a gallon of hydraulic fluid running around loose in the belly. Nearly the entire system capacity. I realized at that point that we had very few options. I radioed the tower and told them to have one of our employees call the other mechanic at home and have him drive to the airport and look at the schematics to see if there were any options I had missed.

Now we were waiting. Trying to make small talk and stay calm and keep our heads about us. The cabin door had not been fully closed prior to the flight and had been blowing cold air on me when I was in back. While I had the time I decided I'd try to close it a little better. As I popped the door open a bit to slam it, I noticed that I could see the main gear hanging almost straight down back there. Then it hit me! I had once read an article about a pilot who had lost all his hydraulic fluid and was able to pull the landing gear into place by hand! I had Rich crack his door open and see if the gear was visible on his side. It was. What we really needed to know now was if the nose gear had fallen into place by gravity and the slipstream blast alone.

We called the tower and requested a low pass for nose gear inspection. While approaching the airport we asked what altitude we could descend to. Tower replied, " Altitude at your discretion." We went right past the tower windows and the call came over the radio, "Your nose gear appears to be down." As we went by I noticed many fire trucks present on the ramp awaiting our arrival.

The other option I came up with was to rock the aircraft vertically to try to force the gear into place. Rich put the airplane into a steep climb and forced the nose down abruptly. All of the carpeting and inspection panels we had stowed in the back came flying up to the ceiling and I watched as the gear swung out and then back down to where it started.

The other mechanic made it to the tower and suggested that we try the electric pump again for ten seconds and if nothing happens then he agreed that my idea was our only choice. After listening to the pump whine for ten seconds with no results we knew we had only one option left if we were to preserve the smooth aluminum skin on the belly. I realized that the gear was too far aft to reach by hand and that I would need to use the aircraft towbar (stowed in the cargo compartment) as a hook to grab the gear leg. I told Rich to take us over an unpopulated area just in case I dropped the towbar. The right main gear was first.

Richard had slowed the airplane down as much as he safely dared and I had sinched up my lap belt since I couldn't move far enough with the shoulder harness buckled. I propped the right door open with my left knee and, with the towbar in a white knuckle grip in my right hand, reached back and down . It was difficult to snag the gear at first because even with the aircraft flying as slow as safely possible, there still is a nearly seventy mile per hour blast of air. After wobling around awkwardly for a few seconds I was able to hook the gear leg in the towbar pinchers.

With all of my strength I pulled on the gear and could not bring it into position so Scott, now sitting in the back seat, grabbed the towbar and with both of us straining we felt the gear touch the stop. When we let the towbar down the gear stayed in place! After a moment's celebration it was time to get the left gear down. Scott and I switched seats again so he was in the front right seat and I was in the rear while Rich flew the plane from the front left seat. Again we propped the door open and reached down and aft with the towbar to grab the gear leg, and again I alone was not strong enough to pull it into position so Scott grabbed the end of the towbar this time and shoved down, using the door sill as a lever point to wrench the gear against the stop.

"Green light! Green light! Gear is down!" shouted Rich as I brought the towbar back into the plane and closed the door. Now it was time to land. I warned Rich that the gear was only held in place by small hooks and the weight of the aircraft, once on the ground, would tend to keep the gear down. But, if we were to bounce on landing, the gear could be jolted off the hooks and collapse as we settle on it. Also, we could not be sure how well the nose gear had locked without any hydraulic pressure on the locks. So the landing had to be performed without any bounce and once down my partner could not use either the brakes nor the nosewheel steering for fear that the whole works might not be locked in place. If the nosewheel did collapse it would be preferable to not have the propellor turning when the nose hit the pavement, so we would have to shut down the engine while landing the plane to stop the propellor before the nose wheel touched down. Which meant that the first landing would be the only chance we got.

To make matters worse, the winds had picked up at the airport and it was blowing across the runway which makes it difficult to land without bouncing and almost impossible to stay on the runway without using the wheels for steering. Needless to say we all sinched down our seatbelts extra tight. From my seat in the back I could not see the runway during the landing, but instead I heard Rich and Scott talking over the headsets. We agreed that Rich would fly the approach while Scott read out the airspeed every few seconds and also was responsible for cutting the fuel to the engine after the main wheels hit but before the nose came down. So it went, as I watched the left main wheel out the side window and listened to the headset. "70 ... 75 ... 70 ... 70 ... 65 ... 70" As the runway came into view under the side of the plane I'm sure I was putting new button holes in the seat. One foot above the ground we decided we were committed to the landing just as a gust of wind let us drop onto the main wheels. Scott killed the engine and Rich pulled back all the way on the controls to keep the nose off until the prop stopped turning. I could see the prop windmilling slowly but not stopping. I quickly prayed stop, stop, oh please stop. I never even felt the nose wheel hit, a testament to Rich's skill. As we rolled to a stop the wind took us to the edge of the pavement but not into the grass.

I was the first one out so I checked the nose gear to see that it was secure. A truck had been dispatched to tow us in to the ramp but they were going to place a towbar on the nose and pull the airplane like they normally do. I said that we would hand push the plane to the ramp before I'd let them tug on that wheel so that's what we did. Richard and one of the ramp hands pushed on the right side while Scott and I pushed on the left. I noticed the paint around the doorsill was scratched where we had pried against it, "Aw man, we scratched the paint," I said.

"We would've scratched it a damn bit more if we hadn't gotten that wheel down," exclaimed Scott. I agreed. As we walked I asked him, "How do you feel?"

He thought for a moment and said, "You know, right now I feel pretty good."

End of Story
 
Great story, but I would hate to have them able to get one main to lock in place but not the other. :eek:
 
tonycondon said:
i can see opening door and grabbing mains. how did they do the nose? crazy...
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The nose gear will fall on it's own and latch in place provided the pin that wasn't working on the 182RG you were flying works. :yes:

The gear still doesn't have the pump pressure on it to insure stays in place though which makes this somewhat risky as any of the three gears could unlatch and fold.
 
It seems to me that they increased risk dramatically to stop some metal from being bent. I guess if I owned the airplane maybe I would try to do all that. But I'd probably still let the insurance company buy it. I'd much rather have two unlocked mains verse one locked main.
 
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