Re: Baron & slip
It all depends on the equipment in the airplane..and the conditions. Personally, I wouldn't be too interested in trying to shoot an ILS to minimums with no nav radios and nothing but a 396. It'd be extremely difficult and rather risky.
I think we're confusing each other. I wouldn't plan on flying anything to mins on a portable GPS and certainly not an ILS. What I meant was the GPS would allow navigation to more suitable weather (e.g. MFVR or better) and the air driven gyro(s) would suffice for keeping the airplane right side up in pointed in the right direction (as indicated on the GPS). And that's not a suggestion that you should waste precious electrical energy on the gear because you have a battery powered GPS, it was about the fact that losing all electrical isn't necessarily a big emergency.
So, if I was going to have to take an ILS in, I wouldn't bother with messing around wasting power on gear. Once I broke out I'd drop try and drop teh gear. (runway permitting).if they go down great..if not..oh well.
Well, on this at least I think we clearly disagree. While a gear up landing is certainly preferrable to an uncontrolled crash, it's not without risk to life and limb and shouldn't really be an intentional part of the plan just because the alternator quit. IMO the correct option when conserving electrical energy is to lower the gear manually (this takes virtually no energy from the battery) and this needs to be done long before "breaking out" on approach or even just enterring the pattern for a VMC landing. I just cannot see the wisdom of flying a tight approach sans a fully charged battery and then attempting to drop the gear electrically on short final. For one thing there's an awfully good chance that the gear will partially deploy which significantly increases the risk of injury and certainly the damage, and you just might need to continue navigating should the runway disappear due to fog and now you're up the creek with a serious lack of paddle.
I just cannot agree with that statement
What statement? I can't see anything to agree or disagree with in the quote from my post that preceeds this statement.
If I needed an ILS to get in, I'd have little interest trying to shoot that on the 396 I have (I've tried. It is tough), therefore there is simply no way I'd waste power on gear.
Again, I'm not suggesting that at all. Either use the GPS to extend to somewhere the weather is better (best choice) or fly the ILS with the proper radios (desperate choice), but in either case extend the gear manually at the appropriate time.
If I had time to crank it down in advance..I'd do that.
Under what circumstances wouldn't you have the time? I suppose if you were so out of touch with your electrical system that you failed to notice any problem until the battery was so drained that any further delay (i.e. to lower the gear by hand) would diminish your chances of reaching the runway before your nav radio quit, one might indeed consider just sliding in on the belly purposely. But even then I'd be inclined to escape to better weather so what we're really down to is the aforementioned lack of electrical awareness, pure luck that the remaining energy is just enough to fly an approach that hopefully doesn't require a miss, and insufficient fuel to reach a known area of decent weather (or no idea where that might be). In that case you've dug such a deep hole that I seriously doubt there's enough skill and luck available to suceed in the intentional gear up landing anyway.
