Wow,
I've refrained from reading through this thread as I no longer fly retractable gear aircraft, but I once did. Regardless, it's not just gear positioning issues we're discussing here, it's human fallibility and deviation from routine.
Most FW applications are SOP driven, the same day in day out with high levels of routine. Becoming habituated to something may preclude many mistakes, but throw in a few factors like fatigue, irregular operations/circumstances, stress, etc, etc, and you find VERY quickly that interruption of routine - no matter how minor - can have catastrophic consequences.
The post above by Nimbostratus is bang on.
I'm sitting here reading this shaking my head at the number of guys/gals choosing "Never" and trying to back it up with all kinds of rationale. I just don't get it, are your egos that large where it prevents you from seeing how easy it is to make errors of any kind? In my world we're involved in extremely fluid operations where routine is almost never regular and the probability of mistakes is very high, and we're involved in operations like bucketing forest fires that CAN be very routine. We just lost (another) high time, experienced pilot the other day with experiences under his belt that many of you cannot imagine - in a routine application that had a few curveballs thrown in that day.
If it can happen, it can happen to anyone and to think otherwise is nothing short of arrogant. For God's sake don't go around thinking you're above it. We are all one start away from making the mistake that can end in the worst possible way. You, me, the AME's who fix our machines, the customers we deal with, the lot. Some applications are more susceptible than others, but they are all susceptible in one way or another.
My two cents.
stl
I just walked out to the machine and had another few thoughts on this.
There is another thread going concurrent to this about "High Time" pilots, the two are very directly related.
Most of my career has been spent in the types of applications that I described above as "fluid," but not all. Either way it doesn't matter as regardless of what I may be asked to do, from setting towers on top of mountains, to bucketing fires, toeing in geologists or loggers on rock faces or slippery stumps, I have developed a method or an approach that works for me and has kept me safe.
I have had no accidents in may career with almost daily opportunity for them - does that mean my routine or my approach to any given situation is accident proof? I think not. My method has worked to keep me accident free thus far, but the ONLY indication that my method works is that fact. Who's to say the right set of circumstances won't prove my method to have some flaws, possibly fatal ones? Nobody.
I may encounter those circumstances today with my fire crew, or I may never, either way there is no proof that I won't forget something or assume something to be safe (for years) which is not, and thus further habituate myself into thinking I am doing my best to cover all the bases... until one day I'm proven wrong.
Nor is there any proof that any of your methods will, with certainty, preclude a gear-up.
stl
