Well after the positive reviews of my ode to the nose gear, I will put down a couple of words on the main gear motor circuit breaker. This only applies to those of us unfortunate enough to be flying a B200 old enough to have electric gear; Beech long ago swapped the electric motor with a hydraulic system, just like the 350 and the 1900. It makes less noise, which is nice from a pilots point of view, since it tends to freak out the pax less. Whether its more reliable than the electrical system I couldn’t say – I have certainly never had a problem with the hyd. system. But since the guys at Beech generally seem to have a moderately good grip on these things, there must be some $$$$ advantage to it.
To Lima X-ray, reference that mate of yours, I am pleased to hear that this made his day. Not being a total stranger to unwarranted persecution, it warms my heart to be able to alleviate someone else’s. If he wants to know more about it, I suggest he goes and gets a detailed description from a mechanic. This highly undervalued species knows more about B200’s than the rest of us put together have forgotten.
OK, the deal with the main gear is this: Although there is a circuit breaker which controls the landing gear motor (conveniently located just next to the gear handle, so the check pilot can pop it when you ask him to select the gear down, thereby setting you up for a nasty fright and a total bust on your recurrent), it is for the solenoid which activates the gear motor – not the motor itself. The motor itself has a 200 AMP (somebody jump in here if I got it wrong) CB, which lives under the floor near the main spar, along with various other bits and pieces.
Now in a hypothetical scenario, the gear motor for some reason is overloaded and this CB blows. Possible ways to make this happen are by something (typically the gear door) getting stuck in the way during retraction. Big deal, you say – we’ll just crank it out. Well……this is the obvious thing to do. It will almost certainly work. But sometimes it won’t, because the door (or whatever) has jammed up the gear nice and tight, and you can not physically un-jam it by desperately hauling on that red handle. The motor however, is a lot stronger than us puny pilots, and if you can get it running again, it will probably shove the gear out along with whatever jammed it in the first place. The reason it stopped was that it got overloaded going up and blew the CB, so taking your handy leatherman thingy with you, and disregarding the concerned looks from the SLF you get under the floor near the main spar and you find that sucker and you reset it. Popping the gear control CB while you are performing this dazzling feat is an excellent idea, but you should already have done that while doing your failed manual extension.
If it works, land normally, proceed to bar and then re-negotiate salary based on the cost of fixing two engines, props and a lot of panel beating, plus some underwear and handkerchiefs. If not, well at least you tried.
Oh yeah, this isn’t really in the books either. It happened to some people I knew. Fortunately they had a mechanic at the end of a VHF radio who they could discuss their woes with. Very useful people, these mechanics. We should endeavour to buy them more beer from our ill gotten gains.