Mooney Gear Up Landing at KSGJ

Now to the ACTION cam for a CRASH LANDING..... gotta love the media :goofy:
 
Sensationalism at its best,unless you have a crash who would listen. Must have been a slow news day.
 
"The plane skidded across the runway, seriously damaging its propeller, according to witnesses."

I'd say a little more than the propeller.

I did not catch whether he had filed a flight plan or not.
 
Last edited:
If the pilot had only filed a flight plan........
 
It looked to me like a wooden or composite propeller, the way it broke.
 
The answer is obvious, of course. We should design propellers so that they are capable of withstanding contact with the runway. Why should we continue to be content with such dinky little things that are so easily damaged?
 
airguy said:
The answer is obvious, of course. We should design propellers so that they are capable of withstanding contact with the runway. Why should we continue to be content with such dinky little things that are so easily damaged?
Click to expand...
Which reminds me of the old joke: we should make planes out of the same stuff they use to make black boxes.
 
How does this happen aren't there warnings for this before you land? Does he press the button and it fails
To come
Out I never flew a retractable but seems unlikely to happen so easily like this seems.
 
marcoseddi said:
How does this happen aren't there warnings for this before you land? Does he press the button and it fails
To come
Out I never flew a retractable but seems unlikely to happen so easily like this seems.
Click to expand...

That is why I installed a voice warning gear alert box in my M20J. Very effective and cannot be mistaken for a stall warning.

José
 
marcoseddi said:
How does this happen aren't there warnings for this before you land? Does he press the button and it fails
To come
Out I never flew a retractable but seems unlikely to happen so easily like this seems.
Click to expand...

Not sure how it works on the Mooney. But in the Bonanza, The gear drop speed is 20 MPH above the flap speed. When preparing for landing, it's the first "mission". i.e. you slow down so you can drop the gear. It can be a bit of a challenge to get below flap speed without dropping the gear and still be descending. I treat it like "first notch of flaps". Failing that, the Bo has a gear warning horn that is set to go off around 15MP or so if the gear isn't down. Failing that, GUMPS GUMPS GUMPS is in your head and should be repeated often during the landing phase. Failing that, I have 2 checklists taped to the panel that both include "Gear Down".

My guess is that gear ups most often happen when you get distracted and neglect all of the above.
 
We had a radar altimeter on our Cessna 185 amphib and if we got to 500 ft agl a very annoying lady would come on and say "gear down for runway landing" or "gear up for water landing" and she would repeat it over and over until you pressed the silence button which was located by the gear lever and the 4 green lights (down) or 4 red lights (up). It would be very hard to screw that up with that set up. Im guessing very few planes have radar altimeters though but with the hight of the amphib it was a huge help to let you know when to flare. Huge difference in sight picture flaring at 20 feet in the amphib vs the 185 on wheels.
 
I can very easily see myself gearing up something other than a Mooney, but I can't see gearing up a Mooney on a normal flight 'cuz it just won't slow down to land without the gear out.

However, if just doing pattern work or some other sort of flight where you'd have to be slow as it is, that's not the case and it opens up the possibility of gearing up more easily.

As for gear warning horns, like everything else, they fail. I was all proud of myself that I hadn't even made the horn go off since I was getting checked out in the plane, and then one day for the heck of it, I pulled the throttle back at altitude, dropped the flaps, kept pulling power, slowed down... And finally realized that the horn was inop. Sigh. It's one of those things you never expect to need, you feel safe knowing it's there, but if you don't test it, it won't save you when you have a bad day.
 
Same here Kent, I would really have to be out of it to not notice the Arrow isn't slowing down as it should.

Even with that I know it is possible and I take precautions against it.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I can very easily see myself gearing up something other than a Mooney, but I can't see gearing up a Mooney on a normal flight 'cuz it just won't slow down to land without the gear out.
Click to expand...

Later J's had speedbrakes as an option, that could get you slow enough I'd think. But yeah, on our J is a lawn dart unless you get the gear and 15* flaps out.
 
On our Lance, you get: 1) a bright red blinking light, 2) an aural warning, 3) automatic gear extension.

BUT...what worries me is practicing steep spirals to a power off 180 to land where you override the auto gear extend and ignore the lights and tones for most of the maneuver. I heard a commercial examinee and his DPE landed gear up doing just this.
 
Bill Jennings said:
Later J's had speedbrakes as an option, that could get you slow enough I'd think. But yeah, on our J is a lawn dart unless you get the gear and 15* flaps out.
Click to expand...

I have speed brakes too, but they don't even come close to the drag of the gear.

Of course, I make a policy of only using them when either the gear is already down, or I'm using them specifically to help get slowed to gear speed.
 
The one time I came close to a gear up I had selected the gear down but a bad pressure switch caused the gear to remain in the up position despite the selector in the down position.
Are those gear warnings smart enough to go off based on 1 or more gear lights remaining off as one gets near the runway?
 
FORANE said:
The one time I came close to a gear up I had selected the gear down but a bad pressure switch caused the gear to remain in the up position despite the selector in the down position.
Are those gear warnings smart enough to go off based on 1 or more gear lights remaining off as one gets near the runway?
Click to expand...

The Mooneys have either manual ("Johnson bar") gear, or electromechanical gear. It's all linked together, if one wheel isn't down, either none of them are down or there's something badly broken in the system and it doesn't matter what the lights say.

In the Ovation, I have a single green "Gear Down" annunciator, and an orange "Gear Unsafe" annunciator that's on when it's in transit.
 
Sam D said:
On our Lance, you get: 1) a bright red blinking light, 2) an aural warning, 3) automatic gear extension.

BUT...what worries me is practicing steep spirals to a power off 180 to land where you override the auto gear extend and ignore the lights and tones for most of the maneuver. I heard a commercial examinee and his DPE landed gear up doing just this.
Click to expand...

My buddy was inches away from eating 2 props on a Seneca on his CMEL ride, we were all watching.:eek: He initiated the go around so he still passed, I guess the DE didn't notice the issue either.:dunno:
 
Sam D said:
On our Lance, you get: 1) a bright red blinking light, 2) an aural warning, 3) automatic gear extension.

BUT...what worries me is practicing steep spirals to a power off 180 to land where you override the auto gear extend and ignore the lights and tones for most of the maneuver. I heard a commercial examinee and his DPE landed gear up doing just this.
Click to expand...

A friend and CFI realized he was basically teaching folks to completely ignore the Cessna 182 RG gear warnings with low power settings at altitude in the practice area doing maneuvers.

He changed his methodology and got an entire club's CFIs to change to demanding that students audibly announce that the warning was active and that they were intentionally ignoring it until X condition was met.

You can substitute any X condition you like, but it gave the brain something to "look for" instead of just blindly ignoring the horn every time.

The day the horn goes off and you're halfway through a callout of "I'm intentionally ignoring... Hey wait a minute! Go around!"

If it's an idea that works for you, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you stole it. ;)
 
What low power maneuvers does one do at altitude that aren't a "landing configuration" maneuver?
 
denverpilot said:
Stall series. Gear up.
Click to expand...

Power on 'take off' stall should be clean at least on flaps but could be argued in a 182 to be gear down as well, but a power off 'approach to landing stall' should be dirty. "Train like you fly".
 
Last edited:
Henning said:
Power on 'take off' stall should be clean at least on flaps but could be argued in a 182 to be gear down as well, but a power off 'approach to landing stall' should be dirty. "Train like you fly".
Click to expand...

True true. I believe this was brought up before when I mentioned it. I honestly don't know WTF they were doing. But every CFI in the place decided they'd better make students verbally acknowledge the horn.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top