Dunlops dangling???

[Spotter]

This one is aimed at you pilot people out there who visit this forum.

I know that sometimes you need to leave the wheels hanging down after takeoff for good reasons. The only thing is....if it's not too busy on the frequency letting us know beforehand would be nice.

Otherwise we sit there watching you climb out, just waiting for you to say "tower, ABC123" in that certain tone of voice.
You know the one where the next transmission goes along the lines of "oh poo something's gone clunk & we'd really like to come back"

If you have got a problem I probably don't want to launch the next departure straight up your ar$e. Even if you haven't got a major problem I still might need to allow extra time before departing the next one if you are climbing out slower than usual.

In the meantime the inbound is tanking in on the ILS & I need to decide whether the outbound is gonna go or vacate the runway. Cos if the inbound goes around he'll be up your ar$e almost as quickly.

So please if you do know beforehand let us know.

[HugMonster]

Well, almost all the problems in my book call for us to get rid of drag as fast as possible. The standard brief before departure is something like:- "Up to acceleration altitude we'll confirm uptrim on the live engine, autofeather on the dead one, otherwise do nothing but sit on our hands, get the gear away and talk about it"

Only three causes I can think of that that would cause us not to retract the gear.

1) Failure of the gear system itself.
2) Wheel/brake overheat and we want to leave it dangling in the breeze to cool it down a little.
3) We forgot (yes, it happens occasionally)

If (3) is the case, we're not exactly going to call you to tell you we're leaving the gear down until we remember to retract it.

In either of the two other cases, you'll hear about it when we're good and ready, if ever.

Sorry to seem dismissive and unsympathetic for your obvious caring about how we're getting on up here - it's appreciated. But the time just after take-off, particularly if we have any problem, is one of very high workload, and I'm not going to promise to call you just to set your mind at rest when we're already working like the proverbial one-armed paper hanger.

If it's any help to you, we don't accelerate beyond V2+5 until 600' AGL. Many companies leave it until 1000' AGL. So you've got all that space anyway, whether we've got a problem or not. The main thing that is likely to change is the rate of climb.

On an ATR, V2+5 is going to be anything from 105-120 kts. Gear limiting speed is around 170 kts. So it ain't gonna slow me down if I can help it at all!

[Grandad Flyer]

How often does that happen? And how long do they keep the gear down? I would think every airline's procedures involve raising the gear as soon as positive climb is established, if you were to lose an engine you really don't need the extra drag.
The only reason to keep it down a few seconds longer might be to cool the brakes, but highly unlikely.
If we have an emergency we are likely to raise the gear before doing our circuit and if its just a gear problem, say we can't get the gear up, well that is not really an emergency is it? We would take our time, decide whether to return or divert to somewhere else, and anyway, if we did decide to return its not going to stuff up your arrival. And you can still send your departure off, we should still be going forward and upward in the normal manner. And if we do have an engine failure we are likely to be making an emergency call and going straight ahead, so you can call your recently departed aircraft and turn them away from us, should the SID also require them to go straight ahead.
And how often do you get an emergency call at that stage, with an aircraft with its gear down longer than normal?

In fact, I don't really understand your problem!

[HugMonster]

Sorry - I've just thought of a fourth reason to leave the gear down.

In an F27, the pneumatics quickly get exhausted if you're coontinually raising and lowering the gear when doing circuits, so quite often on a training detail you'll leave them hanging out.

And Grandad? I don't understand the problem either!

[U R NumberOne]

Huggy and Grandad,

The problem is one of us wanting to provide the very best service to you all, but crews just not keeping us in the picture. I guess Spotter was coming from the direction that if you know for a fact before you roll you will be keeping the gear down for longer than normal on departure, say 20 or 30 seconds, let us know for the reasons Spotter stated. If you decide to do it after take-off or suffer a failure, fine - tell us when you are ready.

Another good example of not being kept in the picture is trying to fit visual approaches in. I've found myself working on a CAVOK day vectoring traffic that normally request visuals day-in-day-out, and when you have set up the sequence expecting their request, the subject aircraft ends up taking the ILS despite my offer of "report if you get the field in sight and wish to make a visual approach". Now I appreciate there are many reasons why the crew may want the ILS, but if you get the feeling we are setting the sequence up to get you in visual (pointing you at a two mile final, dropping to circuit height are good clues ;) ), tell us if you really want the ILS. This is partly our fault for making assumptions based on what normally happens, but it only comes back to my first point - we only want to provide the best service to you all.

[cossack]

Have you ever had this scenario?
Number one requests a visual approach, you give it, and they go out farther than you would have taken them for the ILS?
In our manual under visual approaches it states: "To expedite traffic at any time..." which we take to mean you'll want a shorter length final than you would normally get with an ILS.
If you request a visual approach and its granted, don't go out to a 10 mile final if you know there's traffic behind you. What you may find happening is that you're kept on a heading for longer to make sure you can't go wide, or you don't get the visual approach when you really want it. OK?

What about an aircraft who's number 5 or 6 saying "we're visual if that helps" !!! What planet...

As far as having the wheels down after departure, I wait til the aircraft is at about 2000 feet, make a polite enquiry and take it from there. No problems with subsequent departures since if its the same route its at least two minutes anyway.

[This message has been edited by cossack (edited 05 October 2000).]