PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - FireFighting Airplane crash in scooping
View Single Post
Old 8th Jul 2019, 11:12
  #11 (permalink)  
Pilot DAR
Moderator
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
Age: 63
Posts: 5,614
Received 60 Likes on 43 Posts
Tried to spot any cockpit gear indication from photographs, has anyone got a detailed photo? Or I can try and ask a friend.
Every amphibian has a landing gear position indicator system, sometimes more than one system, it's a certification requirement. There may also be an audio gear position advisory system, which is separate to the indication system. However, if a distracted pilot fails to look the the position indication, and brain farts the advisory system, nothing will prevent landing with the gear in the wrong position. We've seen the occasional video of an RG landplane being landed gear up, with the horn beeping all the way down final, and the pilot ignoring it.

New, and effective noise cancelling headsets may play a role in this. If the audio for an amphibian's gear advisory system is not coming through the headset, but rather a horn or a speaker in the cockpit, a good noise cancelling headset might make it inaudible to the pilot. There is no certification requirement for an amphibian to have a gear warning horn, as it would always be "wrong" for the water landings, so amphibs only have lights and/or physical position indicators in the floats.

If the pilot fails to stop and think about where they are landing and where the gear is, it's a big hazard. It is common for a pilot with some of lots of landplane RG time to transition to amphibs, and this is a big untraining task for the instructor. I have had to train new amphib pilot to break themselves of the habit of doing by rote "wheels down for landing". Pilots laugh at me, but when flying an RG landplane, it's a verbal: "Wheels are down for landing on land." Yeah, I know I'm landing this plane on a runway, but often I'm landing an amphib on the water, when it becomes "wheels are up for landing on water". Worse is that most amphibious float equipped planes are fixed gear planes in their wheelplane configuration. Thus the tried and true PA-18, C172, C18x, C206, C208, Kodiak, Beaver, Otter, Twin Otter, Air Tractor, that one is used to flying as a wheelplane, without ever checking the gear position, just became an RG, and sometimes you should land it wheels up.
Pilot DAR is offline