The Unmishap

Granted I haven't flown every Arrow out there but the one I flew had an electric motor driving the hydraulic pump for the gear. Even if he killed the engine with the mixture, with the master switch on he could still lower the gear. I would at least try to bring the mixture back enough to slow it down enough to get the gear down rather than kill it completely. Its always been a dream of mine as a controller that I would be able to help someone out in that situation. Unfortunately for me, I work in a military tower and am less qualified to give those guys any advice.
 
Timbeck2 said:
Granted I haven't flown every Arrow out there but the one I flew had an electric motor driving the hydraulic pump for the gear. Even if he killed the engine with the mixture, with the master switch on he could still lower the gear. I would at least try to bring the mixture back enough to slow it down enough to get the gear down rather than kill it completely. Its always been a dream of mine as a controller that I would be able to help someone out in that situation. Unfortunately for me, I work in a military tower and am less qualified to give those guys any advice.
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Just fly around a lot and keep your ears open. Someday you might luck out and be able to swoop in from the air and save the day
 
Timbeck2 said:
Granted I haven't flown every Arrow out there but the one I flew had an electric motor driving the hydraulic pump for the gear. Even if he killed the engine with the mixture, with the master switch on he could still lower the gear. I would at least try to bring the mixture back enough to slow it down enough to get the gear down rather than kill it completely. Its always been a dream of mine as a controller that I would be able to help someone out in that situation. Unfortunately for me, I work in a military tower and am less qualified to give those guys any advice.
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They're all the same (PA-32R/44/28R). Commander 11X, beech duchess, appropriated that system design as well. The Arrow gear system is hydro held UP without lockers. Gravity DOWN without lockers, only overcenter throw as down lock assist, and hydro pressure when available. The dump valve is mechanical. Neither electrical power to the pump nor hydraulic pressure to/from said pump is required to drop the gear. The ATC discussion about a distinction between getting the gear down with engine power on or off is immaterial, as it is not a variable that affects gear operation.

Flying the approach by throttling the mixture is fairly easy to do on these things, though I understand that to a canary, a cat is a monster. I had to put myself back in the days where flying a 152 was task saturating, in order to realize how a broken throttle cable in a cat-A sausage can could indeed be a harrowing experience.

All in all, sincere kudos to the dude for handling it to a safe conclusion. That's all one would hope out of this scenario. Based on the palpable loss of composure by both adults at the end I worry the wife/kids may have done their last flight in the spam can with daddy, though I hope that's not the case.
 
Here's a q. In that situation would you put the gear down before gear operating speed? Or, would you pitch up like a crazy to slow to gear operating speed, drop the wheels, and then use the drag of the flaps and gear to keep you "slowish" while working against the stuck throttle.

It's an interesting case.
 
hindsight2020 said:
They're all the same (PA-32R/44/28R). Commander 11X, beech duchess, appropriated that system design as well. The Arrow gear system is hydro held UP without lockers. Gravity DOWN without lockers, only overcenter throw as down lock assist, and hydro pressure when available. The dump valve is mechanical. Neither electrical power to the pump nor hydraulic pressure to/from said pump is required to drop the gear. The ATC discussion about a distinction between getting the gear down with engine power on or off is immaterial, as it is not a variable that affects gear operation.
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Yup. I lost hydraulic pressure in an Arrow one time and the gear free-fell down. The mains locked immediately, but I had to reduce power and slow to about 90 KIAS before the nosegear spring could overcome the slipstream and lock the gear. Another time the nosegear on a Saratoga was reluctant to lock. I pushed the rudder hard back and forth to fishtail the airplane and finally got the green.

And of course if all else fails ...

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I liked the part where he gave the tower a number to call
 
hindsight2020 said:
Based on the palpable loss of composure by both adults at the end I worry the wife/kids may have done their last flight in the spam can with daddy, though I hope that's not the case.
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I saw that and thought it was a little drama queenish. But then again, I don't have kids.

Watching her face my first thought is that she won't get in a plane again and then immediately started the social media about how close her and the kids came to death that day. Some people really can't handle stress at all.

All that matters is that no one was hurt, and no damage to the plane, so it was a great landing.!!
 
Zeldman said:
I saw that and thought it was a little drama queenish. But then again, I don't have kids.

Watching her face my first thought is that she won't get in a plane again and then immediately started the social media about how close her and the kids came to death that day. Some people really can't handle stress at all.

All that matters is that no one was hurt, and no damage to the plane, so it was a great landing.!!
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In reality it was a non event.

But when you are in the plane with your kids and living through it, I'm sure it seemed very much like an event at the time. Part of the "drama" was simply going from high stress to no stress so quickly. The body physically reacts. All those endorphins are pumped into your system and then suddenly you don't need them anymore.
 
Meh, some handle stress better than others.
Had a failed gear extension problem once with the wife. In flight (duh). She sounded stressed out and shaken. That's before I told her I have a backup hand lever to pump the gear down. So I used it. Gear locked, got a green, landed uneventfully. She wasn't happy and cheering and dancing but she wasn't crying, freaking out or InstaBooking about a near-death experience either. She asked if I can get it fixed. So I did. And we enjoyed the vacation on the island. :)

Sometimes, as pilots, we tend to forget how non-pilot passengers perceive things. We need to keep them informed, see things their way and make them comfortable.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Based on the palpable loss of composure by both adults at the end I worry the wife/kids may have done their last flight in the spam can with daddy, though I hope that's not the case.
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She looked quite unhappy at the end, didn't she?
 
That same thing happened to me with a CFI in an arrow back in the early 2000’s. Was right out of annual. Had lesson planned for IFR. Was good experience to have early with CFI in plane. Thought the guy handled it pretty cool.
 
In the spirit of discussion, since this video was posted, here are a few observations/comments from my viewing...

1) I'm not sure if it was edited out, but it's always worth taking a look at the emergency checklist. In this case I don't think loss of throttle is covered, but it varies from aircraft to aircraft. The emergency checklist does address a power off landing, which will be inevitable.
2) I know you were IFR, but you don't need the added distraction of flying through a cloud layer. Don't be afraid to tell ATC you need to get above (or below) the layer to sort things out.
3) I'm of the opinion that if something is not working right, but it is working, get it on the ground and sort it out. When I saw you pull out the tools my initial thoughts were that there's the possibility you could make it worse (i.e. jam the throttle cable to idle yet still not be able to control it). I also think it could be distracting. Airliners have crashed as a result of a distracted flight crew trying to troubleshoot a burned out bulb.
4) This is a good example of why it's important to understand aircraft systems and failure modes. As boring as it is to memorize the purposes of the various micro switches and what they do, situations like demonstrate why it's necessary.
5) It's worth a shot seeing if you can lean the mixture lean of peak to reduce power, particularly if it's fuel injected
6) I'm not sure I would have flown a 5 mile final. With a nice 10,000 ft runway, hitting the mixture to idle cutoff at the midpoint on downwind, pitch up to pattern speed, dropping gear as you pass through Vle, and flying the power-off 360 should work pretty good and give you options if things don't go to plan. When power could be an issue, I'd want to stay in gliding distance of the airport.
 
Brad Z said:
6) I'm not sure I would have flown a 5 mile final. With a nice 10,000 ft runway, hitting the mixture to idle cutoff at the midpoint on downwind, pitch up to pattern speed, dropping gear as you pass through Vle, and flying the power-off 360 should work pretty good and give you options if things don't go to plan. When power could be an issue, I'd want to stay in gliding distance of the airport.
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This was my thought as well. If he was orbiting at 3 miles, why fly away from the airport? And why make such a long final? Even though power off 180s aren't in the ppl acs, my instructors had me do them, in hindsight probably for just such an occasion; it struck me as being a pretty trivial maneuver. I can only guess he was worried about getting the gear down, but I think an on- airport belly landing would beat coming up short with the gear down.
 
I'm of the opinion that if something is not working right, but it is working, get it on the ground and sort it out.
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Yes, and stop fussing with it in the air.

The Navion gear emergency gear extension procedure has like thirteen steps, but what isn't mentioned strongly enough is once you get three green in an non-standard extension: STOP MESSING WITH THE HYDRAULICS and land.

I had a friend who had a failure. The gear would not command down. The first step on the sequence is to pull the secondary release on the uplocks. Usually that's enough except his MCV had failed and it had the hydraulics always driving the gear up. The second round is to repeat the extension sequence with the hydraulic power turned off. In this case, the gear came down and locked as soon as the uplocks were released. If he had stopped there he would have been fine. But on short final, he decided to lower the flaps. He turned on the hydraulics and the gear came back up. Now he's back to square one. There aren't too many fields that the Navion can't land on with no flaps.
 
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