Skymaster down in Los Angeles
 

Very sad news coming out of California (KWHP)

Link to Kathryn's Report:
http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2022/0...3jb-fatal.html

Very sad to see. God speed to the pilot and prayers for the family.

Helmet fire must have got him. He maintained 2000' as his airspeed bled off to the point of a stall, then he apparently didn't initiate a stall recovery. May have had the AP on altitude hold, reduced power too much after the takeoff, then was messing with the gear rather than flying the plane.

R.I.P.

RIP fellow.

I picture the landing gear doors being fully extended open. I've had it happen twice.

The first was when I had the main power cable from the battery short, killing all the power and filling the cabin with smoke. This happened at gear retraction just as everything locked into place. It went right back to the airport as I pumped the gear down. It takes an amazing amount of power to maintain level flight—much more than expected.

The second was after one of my "Hurricane" patrols. I had been out in the Gulf of Mexico for 5:30 in some very nasty weather, bone tired. That 5:30 had been flown at 500' ASL as I had never been able to get any higher. It was almost dark as I turned final at GLS. When I lowered the gear, I heard the "thump" and saw the amber gear light, but I experienced the "speed brake drag." I brought up a considerable amount of power, the flaps back to 1/3, and landed. This was caused by a gear microswitch failure on the pilot side main. It had not been made, so the system thinks it is not locked and leaves all the doors open.

Owners focus on the gear door removal as an item to remove the momentary negative performance with the door cycle during an engine failure before or at that point. I see the doors being locked out as an emergency, and the two experiences caused me to remove the doors immediately after the second event.

I understand that this happened at the same airport, KWHP, as the recent "airplane being hit by the train" event... yep.


"In January, U.S. Rep. Tony Cardenas joined local lawmakers in calling for a review of operations at Whiteman Airport, following numerous crashes in the area in recent years. A plane that crash-landed on a set of train tracks in January was struck by a train just moments after police yanked its pilot out of the wreckage. In November 2020, the pilot of a Cessna 182 attempting to land at the airport died when the aircraft slammed into a residential neighborhood.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez expressed condolences to the family of the pilot in a statement Wednesday. She has been a vocal critic of Whiteman Airport and has repeatedly called for it to be shut down."

The comments on Katherine's Reports speculate an engine failure, but I think he would have stated that over the retraction comment.

I thought I would add a bit to my comments about the hand pump. I'm a tall dude with long arms and, even though crouched over, can fly the airplane and pump the gear down.

I did three Skymaster transitions last year, and none of the pilots could reach the pump handle while flying the airplane; they had to be completely bent over to reach it. So I drilled in them; five pumps max, fly the airplane while looking for traffic, and repeat. This year, I had a 210 transition guy, L model, and had the same problem. Five pumps max, fly the airplane while looking for traffic, and repeat. There is always a rush to get the gear down along with fixation on this specific task.

Here is an interesting comment on Kathryn's Report...

Attachment 2697

No one can say that about my airplane, the $$$$$ are probably going to put me in the ground.

Ah, the "Low Budget 337 Owner" rears his ugly head again. SMH :(

I have no idea if its true, but there is a belief out there that lots of 337's went derelict due to cheap owners. 337 has one of the highest abandoned airframe rates of any modern civilian aircraft.

Now those derelict 337s are being resurrected by low budget owners who want a "safe" twin engine for cheap. They buy the derelict aircraft for a song, and they quickly find out the the cheapest thing about a "cheap" twin is the purchase price - everything else after purchase is decidedly "not cheap".

When buying older "cheap" airplanes, I tell prospective single engine owners to plan on up to another 50% of the purchase price to get the airplane 100% right. I tell prospective twin engine owners to allow up to another 100% of the sales price to get it to 100%.

Not sure why the 337 has gone down this unfortunate path, but it clearly has.

Furthermore, the gear door design is truly poor. I can't think of any other aircraft that drastically loses performance when the gear is being cycled. The holder of the STC to remove the gear doors could do the 337 community a great service by making it free or low-cost. Enough have been sold over the years that plenty of profit has been made. If I owned the STC, I would do it in a heartbeat. The current cost is $3800 plus 24-30 hours of install time.

I’ve looked at a number of “good” buys, for use in the GoM, they all have been junk. I put them at about +200% of what the owners want to put them to work.

The early 210s faced the same gear door issue.

Glad those gear doors/speed brakes didn't get you Patrol Pilot! Do you have the gear door delete STC? If not, would you consider it?

Purchased the gear door removal STC immediately after the second event, then had it installed at the next scheduled maintenance interval.

Attachment 2699

How the H*LL did you just post an inline photo???????? That is SWEET!

Did you notice any performance changes after the STC install?

Were the labor hour estimates accurate?

Somebody needs to design an STC whereby the main gear doors open to their "speed brake" position when you need to lose altitude without shock-cooling the engines...

Dude, I learned how in a topic you started! Making photos appear in posts

No changes at all; aerodynamics, noise, nothing.

Mine took the high end.

That sounds spooky to me!

This is an interesting discussion and take for reason to do the gear door mod. Definitely noodling on it. Thanks!

Last thing to close are the gear doors. Keep your fluid topped up. If your low on fluid they may not close We had intermittent doors not closing. Took it to a shop and they did a gear swing and said all was fine. Took off and gear doors didn't close , cycled the gear and they closed. When I got home I decided to try and top up the fluid and it was low. After topping up the doors closed every time.

I just watched a youtube video of the accident aircraft, may have been taken on the day of the accident. It was some ground ops at Whiteman. There is one view of the aft of the aircraft as it is taxiing away. The back and undercarriage of the plane look pretty dirty---may be oil, hydraulic fluid, dirt, etc. I can't tell.

Perhaps there were issues with the hydraulic system that could have been noticed earlier if the plane had been cleaned. I always try to do a post-flight inspection including getting under the plane to look for oil, hydraulic fluid, etc.

I had my gear doors fail to close one time--It turned out that I tried to retract the flaps and retract the gear at the same time. It tripped the hydraulic gear motor breaker and left the rear doors open. After resetting the breaker I was able to cycle the gear and the rear doors closed.

Kevin