Landing Gear Problems

Last time I went twin flying I got a first hand lesson on mid-air landing gear troubleshooting and procedures. We were practicing slow flight, which involved extending the landing gear, and we didn't get a green light indication. On my Twin Comanche, since its an older airplane, only has one green light to indicate all three gear are locked instead of the now standard three green lights. So we didn't know which of the landing gear was having problems, if any. Most often its a problem with the indicating system, not the actual gear. In this case it turned out to be a broken wire in the indicating system, but there was no way to know that in the air, so we took steps to verify where the problem was. First we tried cycling the landing gear through up and down, but that didn't fix it. I could see the reflection of the nose gear in the landing gear mirror, so the nose was down. At this point visions of gear-up landings start flashing through my head, which horrified me, seeing as it was my own airplane I was flying. I really needed to work to keep a calm and rational thought pattern. Richard, my instructor, didn't seem the least bit agitated, so it helped to draw from his level-headedness. We just needed to work through the problem. We unscrewed the indicating lights and switched them around to see if the bulb was just burnt out. No dice. At this point we did a crew briefing on the emergency gear extension handle. There is a panel in the floor between the seats that opens up. Inside is the landing gear worm gear. Manually extending the landing gear is a matter of disengaging the worm gear, putting the handle (a metal bar) into its slot, and pushing forward. This manually pushes the gear into the down position. And must be done slower then 100 mph. Hopefully we wouldn't have to use it.

At this point we were near the control zone, so we called the tower and informed them of the problem and asked for a flyby before joining the circuit. They asked us for the number of people onboard and amount of fuel in lbs we had. They also notified the airport fire department, which had trucks waiting for us when we landed. On the flyby the tower said that all three gear 'appeared' down and locked. They say the word appear for liability sake. We joined the circuit and did our pre-landing checks.

It was a beautiful feeling to touch down and feel the wheels beneath us, and since it all turned out ok, it was a good experience. I got a firsthand lesson in landing gear procedures, and I think it was also really good practice in emotional control. Regardless of the problem its always best to keep a level head and work through the problem calmly and rationally.