Question for Subsim RL Pilots...
 

I saw something odd today. Coming home from work I saw a DH Dash 8 (or similar turboprop) circling towards the airport (not strange), but his landing gear was down (seems strange I've never seen one with gear down over my house).

Here is what I saw shown on Google Earth:
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/503/strangej.jpg
^The airport is on the left

Did this aircraft have an gear failure or something or was the pilot just lowering his gear early? :hmmm:

Perhaps the landing Rwy changed. Did the wind shift due to CFP?

There could be a # of reasons the gear was down....including the check list.

I have only done gliding, but we used to check for the landing gear on downwind, which would indeed make his landing gear to be down already when he passed over your house.
But then again we used to pass much closer to the airfield, so I guess that may be different with powered airplanes:O:

Whats a 'CFP'? :-?

I couldn't really tell what the winds were like I was surrounded mostly by trees on two sides and walking up a hill.

Was he at or inside the OM?

Maybe they just forgot to put them up and flew the whole fight wtih them down :har:

what size was the "objectet" maybe turbulence :hmmm:

Its abit old school from someone who was used to reading the raw METARs/ TAFs before they were called that.

CFP=Cold Front Passage. CFP is typically associated with a 180° change in wind.

But in general gear up is the least drag configuration. See drag demonstration during multi-engine quals.

The line I drew? That was his exact path near as I can tell.

He was at the same alitiude as other aircraft on that flight path I've seen, 1,000 feet or more.

Wind change from a cold front is possible, we have had scattered showers two days ago, clear weather yesterday and lots of dark clouds with cold temps today.

Could very well be a temp, decrease or drop in the atmosphere,because you have not noticed some special things that happened,call the airport management center for data

When i was flying large turbine powered aircraft there were a couple of things we could do to correct a poorly planned descent or a high approach.

one would be lowering the gear early... sometimes several miles out from the airport.

this would increase the drag and allow the speed to decrease into flap operating range thereby allowing us to quickly configure the aircraft for a much steeper descent and lose altitude quickly.

I would assume this would be the case in your scenario.

another thing we could do would be to push the prop levers forward bringing them to their lowest pitch setting while placing the power levers at flight idle.

this would also create an enormous amount of drag and quickly slow the aircraft. if the aircraft sounded louder than you are used to this may have been one of the techniques they were using.

I have had to do these things numerous times either due to an ATC issued altitude restriction that required a last minute crash dive so to speak or due to traffic restricting our descent capabilities or simply because of poor planning on the approach etc.

EDIT:

if the gear were down the entire time you saw the aircraft it is another possibility - however remote - that the aircraft was a non-revenue maintenance ferry flight during which the landing gear were pinned down. though i doubt this.

Could be any number of things. The Dash 8 has a few landing gear issues, resolved by now, but a little extra care is not surprising.
The main gear suffered locking issues, perhaps the pilot was using the greater forward airspeed to lock the gear. Also it takes quite some time for the gear to extend fully on a Dash8/Q400 (I could be thinking of an ATR though, not entirely sure).

Was it busy around the field? ATC may have given a speed restriction for sequencing or somesuch. Hard to know. Change in active runway could also mess up a pattern. (EDIT - for this section jsut read GR's post :D )

I didn't notice many planes flying today on the way home. I think this was the only one I saw.

I was hoping you would comment on this. Great info.

Yes the gear was down the whole time but I only saw the aircraft for about 20 seconds.