pondlife G'day mate ;)

Yeah cheers, thanks - I suppose there'll be a book on the "Arrer" from AFE or someone?

Hey, maybe I should just take G-ODAK with me when John is not looking!! :p Makes me appreciate how lucky we are to have her... notwithstanding ... no, I won't start!

no problem !
 

After the dak the arrow will not be a problem as long as you remember to put the gear down.

Some years back having seen some of the problems that people had with the retraction system on small pipers and more importantly the problems that people had getting the gear back down I got together with the Chief engineers of BAFC , ATS , WAC and penned a thing for GASIL about the subject.

I cant for the life of me remember when they published it but it might be worth you having a look at it if you can find it.

Gear Auto-extend
 

It's a bit of a pain, really. Unless the pin has been removed, you can pull up the "override" knob and push in the pin to lock it up.

Otherwise, the pesky gear will drop as soon as you go below the limiting speed, and as soon as the engine fails.

We "lost" our first Arrow when the engine went BANG over the Solent, and the gear dropped immediately. P1 didn't realise (bit preoccupied with other things) and didn't quite make it to shore. With the gear up, he would have done.

There are all sorts of strange requirements which basically mean you can't change what's there.

If you lock the override "up", then the gear will retract when you tell it to on takeoff. Otherwise it'll stay down (or half-down) while you slog up to altitude.

Our "crossing water" check includes "gear override up and locked".

ACE

The auto gear extend is certainly on the 1979 non turbo IV that sometimes fly.

Agree with Keef - best thing to do IMHO is to override it all the time - I've known it decline to retract the gear climbing out at gross on a hot day - not funny when you want to accelerate!

Keef
Good call think I'll add that to my overwater proceedure

Looked up the aircraft I'm going to rent on the Australian Register and discovered they are 1989 Arrow III. Have sent off to Surecheck for POH and Checklist. Should I expect auto-gear to be installed in this vintage or not?

Archer III has gear down and welded. No worries there.

Crosscheck the Surecheck list against the aircraft POH afore ye fly. The one I got for the Arrer includes bits that don't work such as "Fuel on BOTH". There's OFF, LEFT, and RIGHT on an Arrow III. No BOTH.

And it misses out a few things in the POH...

They might have fixed it in the meantime - I've not bought another or checked the latest ones - but they didn't acknowledge my "Notification of error".

andy
 

You could also check out the back issues of the club magazine for the story Mrs A and C wrote about her flying trip down under.

Keef - sorry typed Archer but meant Arrow. Have edited it now.

A and C - I think I have that article, cheers.