Checklist or gear up landing, your choice.

Route Irish

Route Irish

New Member
This morning Runway 13R was closed at KRHV due to a gear up landing. As of now, I don't know if it was gear up emergency landing but from my observation it seems to be unintentional. No Fire Response arrived at anytime during the incident. Everyone looked OK. The controller did a great job juggling at least 15 departures before my turn, only 20 minute wait, but seeing the pilot standing next to his Bonanza instinctively made me go over my checklist again.
 

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Suck. I watched a guy have his door blow open at WJF about a month and a half ago. He set it back down on it's belly. I felt bad for the guy.

Edit: Looks like the insurance company just bought themselves another Mooney with belly skin damage and a bad engine.
 
I saw that today. Checklists are nice lol. I was coming back from CVH and was going to stop there when it happened.
 
esa17 said:
Gearing up a C-model Mooney is a talent.
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Yup, looks like that to me too. At least its a E model or older for sure (and it isn't a D, because they wouldn't have had the problem to begin with there). Can't try to blame that one on a bad pump or faulty electrical switch. Sucks having mechanical gear in that situation, doesn't it.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Yup, looks like that to me too. At least its a E model or older for sure (and it isn't a D, because they wouldn't have had the problem to begin with there). Can't try to blame that one on a bad pump or faulty electrical switch. Sucks having mechanical gear in that situation, doesn't it.
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There is an easy way to tell, the teardrop rear window. D-models did originally come from the factory as stiff legs but those placing orders for the D figured out that the conversion from D to C actually ended up costing $500 less than the price of a C-model. As you can imagine when the Mooney accountants figured that out the D-model production stopped.

I miss my D-model with her folding gear. :(
 
That'll buff right out:D

Looks like his insurance is going to go up. It's tough seeing a johnson bar Mooney gear up.
 
Saw that as I was leaving the airport today.

It's a C model, I chatted with the guy as he was washing it a few weeks ago.
 
mooneyguy said:
yeah, that's my thought too! If it is a C it has the manual gear...pretty hard to miss that! but obviously possible:crazy:
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Three or four years ago I looked at getting the electric gear conversion for my D-model and the STC and parts alone were $5k, no clue what the MX costs would have been. It's possible to convert them, and I've seen two, but it's certainly not something someone with any sense does.

A buddy of mine flopped one once after a go-around, luckily his step was up and the damage was mostly superficial. When they tore down the engine they found it was eating the main bearing and was just hours away from a total engine failure so it ended up being a blessing in disguise. But because of his little event I always taught people who were flying on the Johnson bar to never touch the gear on a go-around. She'll fly fine with the gear down so why complicate the whole mess?
 
I guess it was a bad week for Mooney. Last week a guy with 400 hours in his M20C geared up at L26. I saw it the next day on a dolly. Didn't look too bad.
 
Never flown one, but I assume you have something screaming at you the whole time. People just block that out?
 
z987k said:
Never flown one, but I assume you have something screaming at you the whole time. People just block that out?
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That big silver bar in the middle is called a "Johnson Bar" and it's how you raise and lower the gear. Gear up, handle on the floor. Gear down handle locked into the panel. It's very difficult to miss even if the gear horn is INOP.
 
I also see another danger area with gear up landings that I haven't seen folks discuss.

When you are doing repetitive pattern work and have been up a while, you can miss putting the gear down after a number of touch and gos or go arounds. The longer you have been up doing pattern work, the easier it becomes to miss the gear down on checklist because you might think that you already have it after you have put it up and down for the past hour or so.

It can also get tricky on an engine out procedure because the checklist sometimes wants the gear up for best glide.

I went to one school that required an annoucement on final that you were on final and you had three green lights. I always thought that was a pretty good idea.

Joe
 
Watch an old Mooney take off sometime. You can tell the guy has thousands of hours in it if it doesn't wobble a little while he hauls on the bar.

And if you need a checklist to remind you to look at those pretty green lights, find another hobby. Not that I'm anti-checklist, mind you.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Watch an old Mooney take off sometime. You can tell the guy has thousands of hours in it if it doesn't wobble a little while he hauls on the bar.

And if you need a checklist to remind you to look at those pretty green lights, find another hobby. Not that I'm anti-checklist, mind you.
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I don't know about you, but I hate that johnson bar in those old mooneys! It's like arm wrestling at the local speak easy. I think I still have scars and bruises from that sucker.

Joe
 
JOEFRIDAY2 said:
I don't know about you, but I hate that johnson bar in those old mooneys! It's like arm wrestling at the local speak easy. I think I still have scars and bruises from that sucker.

Joe
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I didn't have the pleasure of flying one much, but the few hours I have were enough to convince me that owning one would be a good substitute for a workout.
 
JOEFRIDAY2 said:
I don't know about you, but I hate that johnson bar in those old mooneys! It's like arm wrestling at the local speak easy. I think I still have scars and bruises from that sucker.

Joe
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When rigged propperly it only takes 8lbs of pressure to raise the gear. The problem comes from people trying to raise the gear above 80kias. Then it becomes a workout and you start seeing the "Mooney wave".

I love the Johnson Bars because they are virtually failsafe. I had a complete electrical failure in mine one night and dropping the gear was the easiest part of the whole ordeal. Can't say that in a V-tail. Give me three hours with you on the plane and I'll turn ya!
 
JOEFRIDAY2 said:
I went to one school that required an annoucement on final that you were on final and you had three green lights. I always thought that was a pretty good idea.

Joe
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I figured everyone had something like that. Ours was prop forward, three green on every single landing.(in complex) I have no idea how many times I've said that, but It's pretty ingrained in my brain.... to the point where I still goes through my head on fixed gear.
 
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