REFLECTOR: Insurance

[Don Johnston]

I think Piper had an almost perfect solution. At a particular airspeed, the
landing gear lowered. There was an override that would keep the gear up
below that speed.

Then one day someone flew into icing (error #1), the pitot tube iced over
(no pitot heat, error #2), the gear came down and the plane crashed.

After that, Piper removed the feature.

Or so I've been told.

-Don

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Magee <edjonesbrady at gmail.com>
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list <reflector at tvbf.org>
Cc: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list <reflector at tvbf.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:10:59 -0700
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Reflector: Insurance
Jack,
You are correct. They are worried about a gear up landing. If you don't do
the work that could be 100k+ mistake. I studied film of a P3 crew: 3 brains
in the cockpit (2 pilots + NFO) calling the LANDING CHECKLIST multiple
times and the bird still came down gear up. Until the electronics geniuses
give us a simple fail safe device to ensure we don't land gear up, the
pilot is the weak link and the insurance companies will demand that link be
strengthened via time or training.

Mark B. Magee
Sent from IPhone 4S
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