killbilly
Vocals, Lyrics, Triangle, Washboard, Kittens
So me n' another pilot decide to go flying last night because the Wx was glorious and I needed to shoot some approaches and it'd been a loooooong time since I'd flown my club's Arrow.
We take off and we're climbing out and everything is hunky and/or dory and he says to me, "hey, look there, how long is that light supposed to be on?"
I duck my head and look down a bit (because the gear in transition light is mounted right under the lip of the dashboard and it's hard to see) and sure enough, the gear-in-transition light is on and has been on for a while. The three-greens are dark, so we pull out the PoH and look for an abnormal procedure on the gear. And being that it's a 1972 model, the documentation is....lacking.
So, finding nothing useful, we slow the airplane down some, extend the gear. Gear comes down, locks, three green, gear transition light goes out. Hmmm. Retract the gear, we hear the pump pulling the gear up. Three green go out, the pump turns off (we think - we don't hear it anymore) but the transition light stays on.
So. At this point we *think* everything is fine, but we don't know for sure so we drop the gear again, get three green and turn back to the airport for an uneventful landing.
On the way to a post-flight meal, I check with a couple of other people in the club who say, "yeah, it's been doing this off and on for years, it's not a big deal" and we do a little internet sleuthing which indicates, anecdotally, that it's not a big deal because the light is powered by microswitches which are independent of the gear up/down system. One of the guys in the club notes that you can be sure the pump is off because the load on the ammeter will reduce after the gear have finished retracting. Okay, cool, and I didn't think of that in flight, but doesn't do me much good now and I'm not sure that's a "legit" procedure in the eyes of the FAA.
Because I'm a relatively new and paranoid CFI, it gets me wondering: the PoH doesn't mention this light explicitly in procedures as an item to troubleshoot (note: I have not checked the W/B equipment list yet) and there's not a KOEL in the PoH which addresses this. And while a gear position light *is* a requirement, the FARs don't stipulate a gear-in-transition indicator. So...could this thing be deferred? I think it *might* be deferrable, but I'm not 100% on this until I check the equipment list.
Either way, I squawked it to the club and the enchiladas after the flight were really good so it wasn't a total loss, but I'm curious now.
I'm aware that I'm making a lot of assumptions here and I'm trying to view this as a teachable moment for myself.
Thoughts?
We take off and we're climbing out and everything is hunky and/or dory and he says to me, "hey, look there, how long is that light supposed to be on?"
I duck my head and look down a bit (because the gear in transition light is mounted right under the lip of the dashboard and it's hard to see) and sure enough, the gear-in-transition light is on and has been on for a while. The three-greens are dark, so we pull out the PoH and look for an abnormal procedure on the gear. And being that it's a 1972 model, the documentation is....lacking.
So, finding nothing useful, we slow the airplane down some, extend the gear. Gear comes down, locks, three green, gear transition light goes out. Hmmm. Retract the gear, we hear the pump pulling the gear up. Three green go out, the pump turns off (we think - we don't hear it anymore) but the transition light stays on.
So. At this point we *think* everything is fine, but we don't know for sure so we drop the gear again, get three green and turn back to the airport for an uneventful landing.
On the way to a post-flight meal, I check with a couple of other people in the club who say, "yeah, it's been doing this off and on for years, it's not a big deal" and we do a little internet sleuthing which indicates, anecdotally, that it's not a big deal because the light is powered by microswitches which are independent of the gear up/down system. One of the guys in the club notes that you can be sure the pump is off because the load on the ammeter will reduce after the gear have finished retracting. Okay, cool, and I didn't think of that in flight, but doesn't do me much good now and I'm not sure that's a "legit" procedure in the eyes of the FAA.
Because I'm a relatively new and paranoid CFI, it gets me wondering: the PoH doesn't mention this light explicitly in procedures as an item to troubleshoot (note: I have not checked the W/B equipment list yet) and there's not a KOEL in the PoH which addresses this. And while a gear position light *is* a requirement, the FARs don't stipulate a gear-in-transition indicator. So...could this thing be deferred? I think it *might* be deferrable, but I'm not 100% on this until I check the equipment list.
Either way, I squawked it to the club and the enchiladas after the flight were really good so it wasn't a total loss, but I'm curious now.
I'm aware that I'm making a lot of assumptions here and I'm trying to view this as a teachable moment for myself.
Thoughts?
