Originally Posted by
pineteam
As you said. And just to share. An instructor friend of mine tried in our FTD today to lower the gears above 260kt. No warning; Just the L/G CTL memo will appear amber on the Wheels page meaning the landing gear lever and the landing gear position do not agree. As soon as the speed drops below 260kt, the gears come down automatically ( No need to recycle the gears lever) and the overspeed warning kicks as the Max speed for gears extension is 250kt then it stops when the gears is locked. I assume because the max speed with gears down is 280kt.
Strange! According to Systems Description:
One GEAR NOT DOWNLOCKED and L/G selected down => CRC + MASTER WARNING + WHEEL PAGE + UNLK L/T ON
According to ECAM SYSTEM LOGIC DATA (ESLD), a manual that is used for troubleshooting there is a
30 seconds time delay until the warnings activate. That makes sense because without this time delay any time the flight crew extends the LG they would have all those attention getters for something that is normal operation. My explanation is that the test was carried out within this 30 seconds time frame. Could you ask your friend about the details? If this was not the case we may have one more surprise from Airbus.
Regarding the need to recycle the LG lever, according to the logic diagrams there is no need to recycle.
A/C SPEED WITHIN LIMIT + LG LEVER EXT => LG EXTENSION. It's that simple. I believe the requirement for recycling the LG lever has to do with the standard operational practices. In maintenance we also have this kind of practice. We don't want to have
discrepancy between the flight deck controls status and the respective system actual status. From a human factors point of view any discrepancy is a minefield and has to be avoided.
Overspeed warning due to landing gear extension? I bet that it won't sound above 260kts because the LG can't extend. On the contrary it would sound if the speed increased above 280kts with LG already extended because there is no automatic retraction. Anybody that has experience this?