Landing Gear Failure!

[BourbonCowboy]

This morning whilst flying a route from Oklahoma City to San Antonio in FSX (CRJ700) I was having a rather enjoyable flight (other than takeoff from OKC where visibility was at minimums). I was descending towards SAT and making my turn towards the runway when it happened. My copilot came on and announced that the landing gear would not transit! I went through my checklists and found that I surprisingly did not have an abnormal checklist for landing gear failure.

So I decided to buckle down and give it the old college try. I flipped the landing gear lever a couple times to see if I could get the gear to transit, no luck. I then tried pulling the gravity gear lever, no luck. I excused myself from the final approach and went into a holding pattern to try and troubleshoot the issue. After about 5 minutes it was clear the gear was not moving. I decided to go ahead and perform a belly landing. Quite a harrowing experience! I kept her parallel to the runway at 40 flaps and sat her down. I slid about halfway down the runway before becoming stationary. I evacuated the aircraft and that was that.

So gents, was there anything else that should have come up in my imaginary checklist? I've read a few articles that say the flaps should stay up but I'm just not sure. Anyone have any comments?

[garymbuska]

This morning whilst flying a route from Oklahoma City to San Antonio in FSX (CRJ700) I was having a rather enjoyable flight (other than takeoff from OKC where visibility was at minimums). I was descending towards SAT and making my turn towards the runway when it happened. My copilot came on and announced that the landing gear would not transit! I went through my checklists and found that I surprisingly did not have an abnormal checklist for landing gear failure.

So I decided to buckle down and give it the old college try. I flipped the landing gear lever a couple times to see if I could get the gear to transit, no luck. I then tried pulling the gravity gear lever, no luck. I excused myself from the final approach and went into a holding pattern to try and troubleshoot the issue. After about 5 minutes it was clear the gear was not moving. I decided to go ahead and perform a belly landing. Quite a harrowing experience! I kept her parallel to the runway at 40 flaps and sat her down. I slid about halfway down the runway before becoming stationary. I evacuated the aircraft and that was that.

So gents, was there anything else that should have come up in my imaginary checklist? I've read a few articles that say the flaps should stay up but I'm just not sure. Anyone have any comments?

You left out 1 major thing hydraulic pressure. Now mind you not all landing gear uses hydraulics but the majority do. As for the use of the flaps They would help to slow you down giving you a slower landing speed. But if you are having hydraulic problem chances are the flaps will not work either and the controls may be hard to move as well.
Some aircraft have a manual means of lowering the gear, but I think this is only found in larger aircraft. I f you have ever seen the movie Memphis Belle They had to manually crank down the one strut. I flew in a Supper Connie that had the same thing.

[PhilFly]

Hi,

May be you have a problem with the speed limit for activate the landing gear.

In the aircraft.cfg, you have this section and values in bold are the minimum speed to activate the landing gear.
In this example, speed limit is 260 knots

[contact_points]
point.0=1, -8.50, 0.00, -6.70, 1600, 0, 0.5625, 46.8, 0.80, 2.5, 0.55, 10.0, 10.0, 0, 260.0, 260.0
point.1=1, -56.50, -6.76, -8.60, 1600, 1, 1.0, 0.0, 0.90, 2.5, 0.65, 9.0, 9.0, 2, 260.0, 260.0
point.2=1, -56.50, 6.76, -8.60, 1600, 2, 1.0, 0.0, 0.90, 2.5, 0.65, 9.0, 9.0, 3, 260.0, 260.0

Have a nice day

Philippe

[Azframer]

I don't think he would have been able to have 40 degree flaps at higher speed than maximum landing gear down speed. But he would need to know his maximum speed for his gear and eliminate that from the list next time.

Rick