- Joined
- Jan 25, 2013
- Messages
- 1,502
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This wasn't in a Piper, but a good lesson in small details...
About a month ago I'm leaving from KHOT at night on 23. You can look at the takeoff mins, there's an ODP. Anyways, you climb right into a mountain adjacent the field.
So we clear ground, pull the gear up, climb at 90 knots, but...we're not going anywhere, just climbing at ~350 fpm. Something is wrong...engine gauges? Nope, all green. Gear? Aha, 3 green. Release and retract, nothing. Mountain still coming...pull pump breaker and reset, nothing...mountain still coming. Quick calculation time, the mountain is halfway inside the 5 mile arc on SV but just turned yellow, we're gonna make it so we don't have to turn back. Winds calm, no fear for downdrafts. It just turns green as we pass over. Then it's a matter of what to do when we get to DFW (at 110 ktas...). Verify enough fuel, we have that covered. All the towers are closed except Love Field and KDFW. Someone has to look at our gear to make sure we can land. Thankfully this is VFR conditions and we hadn't gotten our clearance on the ground so we don't have to report (yet).
About 2 mins later we figured it out, I kicked the emergency release with my foot when I got in, it's on the wall of the center console.
There is nothing on the POH factory checklists that could have prevented this, the emergency release has no annunciation and the hydraulic system has no pressure gauge.
The lesson is..
1). Synthetic vision was worth the 2500 bucks.
2). Be careful where you put your feet getting in.
3). Add "emergency gear handle check" to pre-takeoff checklist.
No one on the owner's forum could believe that my particular year didn't have a check for the emergency release in the pre-start checklist in the POH. Other year models do, mine doesn't. I would never have thought to add it when copying everything into my own one-page laminated checklist. Just one of those things...
http://imgur.com/AJl1FNM
About a month ago I'm leaving from KHOT at night on 23. You can look at the takeoff mins, there's an ODP. Anyways, you climb right into a mountain adjacent the field.
So we clear ground, pull the gear up, climb at 90 knots, but...we're not going anywhere, just climbing at ~350 fpm. Something is wrong...engine gauges? Nope, all green. Gear? Aha, 3 green. Release and retract, nothing. Mountain still coming...pull pump breaker and reset, nothing...mountain still coming. Quick calculation time, the mountain is halfway inside the 5 mile arc on SV but just turned yellow, we're gonna make it so we don't have to turn back. Winds calm, no fear for downdrafts. It just turns green as we pass over. Then it's a matter of what to do when we get to DFW (at 110 ktas...). Verify enough fuel, we have that covered. All the towers are closed except Love Field and KDFW. Someone has to look at our gear to make sure we can land. Thankfully this is VFR conditions and we hadn't gotten our clearance on the ground so we don't have to report (yet).
About 2 mins later we figured it out, I kicked the emergency release with my foot when I got in, it's on the wall of the center console.
There is nothing on the POH factory checklists that could have prevented this, the emergency release has no annunciation and the hydraulic system has no pressure gauge.
The lesson is..
1). Synthetic vision was worth the 2500 bucks.
2). Be careful where you put your feet getting in.
3). Add "emergency gear handle check" to pre-takeoff checklist.
No one on the owner's forum could believe that my particular year didn't have a check for the emergency release in the pre-start checklist in the POH. Other year models do, mine doesn't. I would never have thought to add it when copying everything into my own one-page laminated checklist. Just one of those things...
http://imgur.com/AJl1FNM
