YA, cool emergency!

[KenG]

The key (and it's difficult) is to come steady with about 550 fpm descent rate and DON'T
touch the command until touchdown, the touch will be a bit hard but the gear will unlock.

Ok this does not make sense to me. The problem or at least as I understand it is that he has a gear that is not locked i.e. unsafe indication of
landing gear. It would thus seem the last thing I want to do is touchdown hard. Now there are many aircraft and I have heard of a small aircraft,
Piper, where one gear failed to extend at all and the pilot/owner bounced the aircraft off the runway and the gear came down, however I have not heard
of any large or heavy aircraft attempting such a stunt.

I can tell you as a King Air Instructor Pilot that I do not teach bouncing the aircraft off the runway to attempt to influence the gear to come down.
1. If you damage the extended gear during this stunt you may now be unable to retract the gear for a belly landing. 2. Once the aircraft touches down
on the runway you must continue to fly the airplane, just the shock of having one gear down and the other up may produce a downward moment on
touchdown that exceeds the ailerons on that wing. Thus you could end up with a wing strike in this case. Once the wing touches the ground the airplane
will rotate about the surface with the higher friction. In this case the wing scraping on the ground. Not to mention the change of either a propeller
strike or a turbine strike, where the change of forces inside the engine causes the turbines to scrape the wall. You may save a $25K prop at the cost
of a $1 million engine!

Clearly the choice of solution will depend on the situation. I would be much more willing to accept a landing with an unsafe nose gear as opposed to
an unsafe main. If I have someone on the ground who can confirm my gear state by doing a low pass then I would also attempt that. But when things are
bad and looking worse I will belly the airplane rather than attempt to become a test pilot.

In my opinion the rewards should be for:

1. Recycling the Gear (Sometimes a faulty down lock will correct itself if the gear is simply recycled.
2. Declaring an Emergency
3. Performing the correct emergency procedure. In FS9 this is only manual extension
4. If the gear still does not extend then retract the gear and belly her in. Shutting off the engine just prior to touchdown is bonus.
4a. If there is a way to say fail just the nose gear then choosing to land on the mains and gently setting down the nose would also be acceptable and
worth more points then bellying in a faulty nose gear.

Again I am just an instructor pilot and not an omnipotent programmer. :grin:



Post Edited ( 02-05-06 15:35 )