CTC wheels up ldg

[cutter2]

Any info about the CTC twinstar wheels up in NZHN on the 6th :\

[27/09]

If your information is correct, I'm surprised it hasn't happened before with the way they fly around with the gear warning blaring away while operatiing single engine. You can hear it whenever they make a radio call. Even though it makes one hell of a racket, there is the risk that sooner or later someone is going to become desensitised to it and ignore it at a critical time.

There is the old saying, "There's those who have, and those who are yet to do it". With the correct training and procedures we should all remain in the latter category, however there is alway the chance of some distraction/change of normal procedure that catches pilots out. I've seen it happen.

Lets hope your info is incorrect.

[Sqwark2000]

Definately a light twin made a wheels up landing at HN.

2 sets of prop strike marks, not very wide apart and subsequent skid marks on RWY18L.

Notam issued for blocked runway.

Tower very cagey when enquiries made :}

S2K

[toolowtoofast]

It landed, and the wheels weren't down? Or they were down, and folded back up?

[Sqwark2000]

The prop strike marks were even on both sides, so I assume they (wheels) weren't down to start with.

[A37575]

Probably taught to fly by instructors who teach undercarriage down and locked for fixed gear aircraft as part of before landing checks just in case that one day they will fly a retractable gear aircraft. Every flying school seems to teach the same drill downwind BUMMMF etc Brakes, Undercarriage, Mixtures, Master, Mags etc etc. Not a wise move to teach students cockpit drills that don't make sense for the aircraft type.:rolleyes:

[toolowtoofast]

Probably taught to fly by instructors who teach undercarriage down and locked for fixed gear aircraft

mmmm - probably not actually.

[27/09]

A37575

It's not what's in the the drill that is the problem, it's how it's used.

I prefer the one drill that covers most light aircraft, fixed or retract.

When you get to the "Undercarriage" part of the drill it should be "Not required" for fixed gear and "Down and locked" for a retract, not the same response for both situations. That way pilots are trained to think (hopefully) a bit more about what they are doing.

I do see where you're coming from however if you do it the way you suggest there is still the risk that a pilot newly converted onto a retract will, in the heat of the moment, use the "old" drill and forget the "undercarrige" check entirely.

In other words either way can be said to be better or worse than the other.



TooLowTooFast

I would think a gear failure which is what your'e suggesting would have resulted in a rather more "exciting" outcome. It would be unusual for all three gear to collapse evenly, therefore there would have been quite different runway marks from those that have been mentioned.

[Sunfish]

Being congenitally stupid, I always say "Undercarriage welded down" or "Undercarriage selected down, (pause with hand on switch until Three Greens), then three greens, undercarriage down". I figure that way I am least likely to forget to lower the gear, or also to rush to the next item and forget the three greens part of the check.

I do the same with propeller and mixture and primer parts of the T/O check even when one or more of them is missing. I simply acknowledge that they aren't there. Same with landing checks.

[bushy]

I once went to a talk given by a psycologist from Farnborough who had been involved in accident investigation. He said he often found that pilots had read the checklist, saying "gear down, three greens' but had not actually done it. They then landed wheels up.
One captain said after landing "there's something wrong with the brakes"
I found that it was prudent to have an extra trigger for lowering the gear that was indpendent of the checklist. just in case.
It's simple. When you see a runway in front of you, check wheels. Erery time. The it becomes a habbit.

[aileron_69]

I find if as I come back through 140kts I punch the gear down to help bring the aircraft back to a safe speed to drop some flap. Obviously different for different planes and I dont do circuits where I imagine you would only be loitering around down slow but it works for me.
Try flying a surveyor where you have to remember to put te circuit breaker as well tho!! Basically it all comes down to making you have a rhythm that you get into where you are doing everything in the exactly the same order and at exactly the same stage of flight every time. They begin to teach that when you learn at the aeroclub with cockpit drills, you just need to fine tune them to your aircraft and the type of flying u are doing.

[toolowtoofast]

I wasn't suggesting anything, it was just an option. Certainly the nose doors being open would suggest some kind of undercarriage action though.

[troppo]

Maybe a youtube video of an amphibian wheels down landing could be used as a learning tool. Sure different landing surface but as a reminder of all checks required rather than the false security of a neumonic.

[Lindstrim]

POB Aircraft inadvertently landed with its landing gear up after the crew failed to select gear down during the approach. Asymmetric circuits were being conducted at the time, which results in the gear warning sounding throughout the simulation.

From CAA website

[27/09]

Asymmetric circuits were being conducted at the time, which results in the gear warning sounding throughout the simulation.

Does the warning really need to go all the time?

Would a slightly higher "Zero thrust" setting stop the gear warning sounding?

A recent CTC press release stated that the DA42 is considered internationally to be the best airline pilot training aircraft in the world. Really?

Seems to me there is a flaw with the mighty Twin Star.

[Artificial Horizon]

I remember when I was doing some CPL training in the UK a brand new Piper Arrow arrived on the flight line. Everyone was very keen to get their hands on it, only problem was it had a very loud and annoying gear horn that sounded throughout all stalling exercises. Engineering scratched their heads for a few days to try and turn the volume down, instead they came up with a great idea 'lets just disconnect the siren!!'. This was done and on the very next flight a beautiful gear up landing was made:} New engine and a bit of structural work was then required on our nice new 10 day old arrow:sad:

[BurntheBlue]

Nice story AH.

This is a clear cut case of desensitizing, that siren is something that perhaps could do with a tweak in the twin star.

Other light twins have a siren that will only sound with a combination of events, that is 'gear up' and 'less than 10-15" MP'. So the siren will go off on a clean stall which is annoying in a trainer, especially if it finds itself stalling regularly. It is however, absolutely essential for reminding you that something might be very wrong on very short final.

That said, i must echo aileron_69's sentiments.
it all comes down to making you have a rhythm that you get into where you are doing everything in the exactly the same order and at exactly the same stage of flight every time.

[toolowtoofast]

All retractable aircraft (single and twin) should have the horn/buzzer. Being able to cancel it in certain configuarations should be a given (ie - low power, clean flap, gear retracted, on descent) but once there is flap out beyond the first stage (ie landing flap but gear still up) the horn shouldn't be able to be cancelled.

I don't think the twinstar has the 2-stage cancel ability - it just blares ALL the time - as soon as one power lever is retracted.

And you can't do a 'zero thrust' position, as it's only a single lever control on the fadec engine.

[slackie]

And the warning horn is (apparently) an identical sound to the engine failure warning horn on a Hughes 500...as the pilot of an H500 on a test flight told me having heard (and reacted:eek:!) to the sound of a DA42 simulating!! Apparently required a change of shorts!!

[Aerozepplin]

And you can't do a 'zero thrust' position, as it's only a single lever control on the fadec engine.

Would you not just set a percentage of power?

I wonder why they don't have a horn mute ability. A twin engine training aircraft is of course going to spend half its life doing assymetric simulations. The Dash 8 system is nice an simple, horn mutable with one power lever at or near flight idle, and flaps less than 15 degrees. Can't be that hard can it? Diamond spent enough time making the thing look ugly...

[osmosis]

In training we all do what the training school/instructor requires of us. In my day, this was invariably mnemonics; and, in my opinion, unnecessarily complicated ones at that. As a student in early days a long time ago, I too, used to run through this long list of letters, rattling it all out so the instructor could hear how diligent I was. But in doing so I realised that each individual item was not being attended to. Enter the real world (aka the workplace) and my training continued in a different line. Watch an agricultural pilot at work, he does everything that is needed but nothing unnecessary, particularly in landing cycles of only a few minutes. A quick glance at fuel quantities, apply flaps and trim, a note of wind direction for control input and not a whole lot else. No incessant "hatches/harness" or "magnetos both on" checks. For way too long I suspect the schools have focussed on the methodology of the checks and not the actual physical items themselves, notwithstanding students inexperience of course.

[27/09]

Here's a novel idea. Why not have a gear unsafe light with one throttle closed and the horn with both closed. This would seem to cover things nicely. If I recall correctly some Pipers have this set up.

As for the horn sounding during a clean stall, really, how much stalling does an aircraft like this actually do compared with the total flight it does?. Not much in my experience. You're not teaching stalling at this stage of the training process, it's more an exercise in getting the student used to handling the aircraft. In most cases two clean stalls during the type intro and one during the type check out. A horn going in this situation isn't that much of an issue.

[27/09]

Since my earlier post about a higher "zero thrust" setting, I have found out that a higher "zero thrust" setting will silence the horn, BUT it is not standard procedure to do so. How dumb is that?

[MikeAlphaTangoTango]

Hmmm, maybe a little balance needed here....

As an ex-CTCer, I don't recall completing an asymmetric cct in the DA42 where the "dead" engine power lever wasn't advanced to the point that the gear warning stopped operating (simulated feathered setting) once the dead engine had been simulated switched off; the usual pratice was for the instructor to do this so as to avoid the obvious trap that seems to have been assumed in the above posts. (It's also pretty irritating to listen to so why wouldn't you cancel it as soon as is sensible?). Admittedly this was a couple of years ago but I'd be surprised if the procedure has changed.

Clearly, someone's dropped what we assume to be a perfectly servicable aeroplane on the runway with the gear up, but it seems a little premature to make a whole series of sweeping statements about the quality of CTC's training / procedures based on very little fact.

Just my 2 cents worth.....

[27/09]

MATT
As an ex-CTCer, I don't recall completing an asymmetric cct in the DA42 where the "dead" engine power lever wasn't advanced to the point that the gear warning stopped operating (simulated feathered setting) once the dead engine had been simulated switched off; the usual pratice was for the instructor to do this so as to avoid the obvious trap that seems to have been assumed in the above posts

From what I have heard some instructors used to (perhaps still do) this but it is not standard procedure from what I have heard. The power setting required to silence the horn is slightly above that which has been determined to be the "true zero thrust" setting.

(It's also pretty irritating to listen to so why wouldn't you cancel it as soon as is sensible?). Would agree with you 100% on this

Currently it would seem it is standard procedure is to use "true zero thrust", as is evidenced by the racket that can be heard every time a radio transmision is made while they are operating single engine.

but it seems a little premature to make a whole series of sweeping statements about the quality of CTC's training / procedures based on very little fact

I think there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that the pilots had most likely been desensitised to the warning horn.

Asymmetric circuits were being conducted at the time, which results in the gear warning sounding throughout the simulation.

This excerpt from a previous post from the accident brief off the CAA website would prove this as well.

[BBMouse]

With the sole exception of the GPWS "Too Low Gear" warning (which is still far from perfect having also allowed wheels up landings to occur), all gear warnings that i have come across are nearly totally useless.

Sooooo many aircraft worldwide with sooo many differing types of warning have landed wheels up, many with very experianced and current pilots, including some in this country, most probably using thier so called fail safe proceedures, memoirs, checklists etc

Those warnings which operate continuosly get ignored, those that can be silenced are forgotten. In the heat of the moment checklists are rushed, memoirs are said without being actioned.

Dont get me wrong they are all an aid, Keep those ideas flowing, but rely totally on any of it at your peril.


Goodluck out there!
(and no i have never, yet, fingers crossed)

[Sqwark2000]

I fly into HLZ and ROT quite regularly, and quite often hear the warning horn blaring away during CTC radio calls on the local freq. So often, I thought it was standard not to silence it.

S2K

[Dreamflyer1000]

I take it the tower didnt look at the aircraft at any point short finals? that alone to me seems a little odd that they didnt see this at any point during the app phase..hmm..
and yes, i know its not their 'job' to check for GA, but, you get my point...

[j3pipercub]

i know its not their 'job' to check for GA, but, you get my point...

Actually, no I don't please embellish.

[Dreamflyer1000]

as in I know they have to check for the likes of airnz ifr a/c etc on finals, and its not their 'job' to have to check that with GA, but surely they dont issue the landing clearance while looking the other way?? or if its issued on say a 5 mile final or downwind, they glance at the aircraft before it touches down???
Of all the times ive been up the tower, for me anyway, its just a natural thing to do, once i've heard them issue the clearance, i'll look at the aircraft.
maybe im wrong i dont know. just a thought. and no, im not bagging atc..they do a mighty fine job in HN TWR. The guys (and girls) up there are awesome to deal with.

[The African Dude]

"All traffic make one left-hand orbit, my wife's on the phone..." :}

[haughtney1]

Speaking of gear up landings....and gear horns

Oucheee (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hMn7ZweF6s)

Whoops :}