Gear failure - Kobayashi Maru

[VegasTim]

Has anyone noticed the frequency of gear failures has dramatically gone up lately? I would be OK with the failure if the client would recognize the manual crank down or emergency blow down on jets but it doesn't. No one should ever attempt to crank the gear up if the motors don't work....keep 'em down until on the ground and the mechanics can look at it. But when the gear won't come down, 99.9% of the time in the real world the emergency system will work. In the virtual world at FSA, the emergency system works 0% of the time. None of the flight simulators will recognize a belly landing - end result is always a crash.

How do we know the source of failure is with the client? Because the moment a pilot clicks EXIT on the client, the gear works.

I personally think the failure threshold should be for aircraft needing at least a B service (95% & below). We are having aircraft experiencing gear failures right after coming out of an A service.

[MadJosch]

Or the other way:
Question to the developers: "What can we do to SUCCESSFULLY encounter a gear stuck failure?"

[MMattyK]

I have to say that every time I've had a gear failure, the manual cranking system to get the gear down is somewhat unreliable, as looking at the gear from the spotter plane view, the gear drives down and then recycles up! It takes a good 20-30 selections of manual gear down using the Ctl+G to actually get the gear to stay down, but even then it unlocks sometimes if any toe brakes are applied, which can be an issue in a 146 as it has no thrust reverse.
So yes it might need looking at, and the system isn't exactly true to life, but perseverance (in my case) seems to have been the order of the day.

[CAPFlyer]

The landing gear failure simply triggers the FS hardcoded failure for landing gear. If you're having problems getting them to extend, then it's with the model, not with the client.

[VegasTim]

Feel There ERJ145, Wilco PIC737-400, Default FSX CRJ700, Carenado PA46, Premier Aircraft Design Dash 8-300 (freeware), Default FSX 747-400. All in the last month via reports from our pilots and my personal experience. Nobody could get the emergency gear release to work.

[VegasTim]

Is it possible the client failure trigger is "constant" instead of a pulse trigger? In other words like holding down a key.....so when we try for emergency gear release it is being overridden by the failure trigger .... ? You can probably tell I'm not a computer guy, I'm just taking wild guesses here. I have tried the emergency gear release both with the FSX key command and through FSUIPC. Same result: nada. The gear lever "shakes" in the VC when trying for either regular gear down or emergency release.

Maybe I need to program the emergency gear command using FSUIPC with full repeat on a momentary push button and if I hold the button down long enough (say 30 seconds) eventually the gear may come down? dunno. More guesses.

[joefremont]

I believe there is an option in MSFS to manually lower the gear. Just make sure there is a keyboard assignment for it.

[MMattyK]

In FS9 and FSX, the standard pump gear keyboard selection is Cntl+G but it is NOT a blowdown in my experience, it is a pump down, so may require many selections to get the gear to lock down. In previous post, if you spot plane view whist doing this, even with the gear selector in the down position, Cntl+G would appear to make the gear cycle, but it does eventually lock down after many selections.

[VegasTim]

Thanks Mat,
I believe you are correct in the simulation of hand cranking the gear instead of a blow down. I'm going to do some testing with FSX not coupled to the client to see what happens when I fail the gear through FSX failures. I have set up a momentary push button through FSUIPC with repeat full on so theoretically all I should have to do is hold that button down (emergency gear release) until the gear comes down and locks. I think you are right in the time involved, I'm guessing it'll take 15-30 seconds which would equate to your pushing the key command 15-20 times in a pulse mode. Right now I'm flying a new Viking (de Havilland) Turbo Beaver with fixed gear so it may be Thursday or so until I get some test results with retracts done. I'll test on various aircraft including default.

I'll post my results here when I have a firm solution which should also work with an FSA triggered failure.

[VegasTim]

Well here is some interesting data: Go to Failures in FSX, trigger the gear to be failed and you will not be able to get them down with the emergency gear lever.
Must be something in FSX config, I'm posting up on our home website (flightsimulatornetwork.com) to get the computer guys who tweak on files every day to have a peek and see if they can find out the cause.

As CapFlyer stated, this issue has nothing to do with the FSA client, I have the test data to prove that. Tried the default Airbus A321, Boeing 737-800 & King Air 350. Same result: once failed in up mode, they are not coming back down. I held the emergency gear lever command down for well over a minute using both FSX key command and FSUIPC button assignment with same result: no joy on gear down.

[VegasTim]

Well this appears to have been an ongoing issue in FSX for quite some time, plenty of discussions on several flight sim forums but no concrete solution to the manual gear extension issue. A few guys get the CTRL+G key command to work, most (like me) don't.

So it appears the only solution for the vast majority of us with this no-win scenario is to start the flight over by exiting the client and the reloading the flight.

I still am of the opinion that major system failures should be restricted to aircraft needing a B service or more, but again it's only 1 person's opinion.

[MadJosch]

+1

[MMattyK]

As stated earlier, the Cntl+G solution is a pump down action, so can take many iterartions to pump the gear down, AND your IAS has to be within limits, else it just wont work. When It happens to me, I've stayed at slowest calculated landing speed +10 with full flaps, gone around pumping the gear using many instances of the Cntl+G combination, and although I've had the gear collapse once after stopping (not seen as a crash by the client incidentally, but made it impossible to taxi to the gate/parking), it has always worked for me. The thing was though the next flight on a different day using the same ac, without doing a servicing (ac still over 95%), the gear failed to lower again. Not sure if this was a client thing, or if the system remebered the tail number, and gave the error as no servicing had been carried out, but post an A check after flight completion, the failure reset and was back to normal.
If it was a function of the client remembering the tail number and generating the failure again, now that's clever! Come to think of it, I think I had the same after an engine failure too (ac above 95%, no servicing and subsequent flight generated an engine failure)!
I have to admit though, these events did occur some time ago, and my memory may be playing tricks lol.

[VegasTim]

Well I've tried the KingAir 350, Airbus A321 & Boeing 737-800 and can't get the gear to come down on manual with any of them. I'm thinking I may have a glitch in my FSX, but after over 2500 hours on my system with no major issues, I'm not about to do an uninstall & re-install due to failures created on perfectly good aircraft. It's easier to just EXIT and start the flight over. Pain in the tail after a 2-3 hour flight, but as long as FSA continues to trigger failures on well maintained aircraft, it is what it is.

I spent well over 10 minutes with the KingAir at 125 knots. I also tried to fail just one gear and the result is the same: the good gear come down, the failed gear won't come down regardless of what I try. I have tried holding the key command as well as continuous rapid button pressing .... no sign of any gear extension even trying to initiate after 4 minutes of repeated attempts.

For me, this is a true Kobayashi Maru: the no-win scenario. (That's for all you Trekies out there!)

[MadJosch]

Then you know how to succesfully accomplish the Kobayashi Maru Scenario?
I would call you "Captain", Mr. Kirk!