Apart from the complexities of dropping loads various, I would have thought that from an aerodynamic point of view (as Gopher asked) the lowering of the ramp below the arms attached position would have a similar effect to putting some serious nose down elevator on ? In fact, I always believed that the Loadie checked the arms were attached, as part of his pre flight checks, to prevent such an inadvertent selection of the ramp. As was their design function. Or was all that training I had irrelevant ? After all, the ramp is a significant piece of "control surface" to poke into the airflow.
Smudge
