Like any other field, aviation has unique and often bewildering lingo to the uninitiated. I know it's especially true for military/Naval Aviation (buster, Judy, pop-eye, etc.).

The other day my wife saw a light civil plane flying and asked what they call a plane when the wheels "stay down." I told her it was called a fixed gear aircraft. She then asked what they called one whose wheels "went up." I told her they were referred to a retractable gear or retracts.

Without missing a beat she said, "That's silly! Why don't they just call them 'Fold-ems' and non-fold-ems?"

The more I thought about it the more I thought damn it, she's right.

...and Reverse on the PRNDL should be B for Backwards. Lucy says so.

If the person who named Walkie Talkies named everything:

Stamps = Lickie Stickie
Defibrillators = Hearty Starty
Bumble Bees = Fuzzy Buzzy
Pregnancy Tests = Maybe Baby
Bra = Breastie Nestie
Fork = Stabby Grabby
Socks = Feetie Heatie
Hippo = Floatie Bloatie
Nightmare = Screamy Dreamy

Funny, I call every small General Aviation plane a 'Shit box', because a mechanic we had called them that.

I call the C172 I'm studying in the "Vista Cruiser", because that's what it closely resembles in terms of electronics, etc.
A 1975 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.

quote:

Originally posted by Rustyblade:
...and Reverse on the PRNDL should be B for Backwards. Lucy says so.

I thought “R” was for “Retreat”....

You were military and should know that it stands for "Retrograde, movement, one each".

quote:

fixed gear

Good thing they fixed it. Landing gear is a bad thing to have broken.

Sometimes called 'three down and welded' if the tower asked for gear status.

Any landing gear will retract if one lands hard enough.

Nobody ever calls it crashing gear.

Despite the best braking and antiskid systems, the airplane will always land shorter with gear up.

Except for the boat guys with the little hook at the back. They seem to get stopped pretty short.

Airplanes have flippers at the end of the wings, flappers at the back, and up-and-downers on the very back. Pull back, go up. Pull back more, come down. The gas pedal is in the hand and is really a cost index. Some have a spinner on the front, some suck, squeeze, bang, and blow. Aircraft squawk like parrots, flash like college kids, spin like politicians, climb like ruptured ducks, and helicopters, unlike airplanes that use the lines of grace and symmetry to create lift, merely beat the air into submission. Thrust counters drag, lift counters money, and every pilot wishes his mother believed he had real job; respectable work as a piano player in a whorehouse.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
Except for the boat guys with the little hook at the back. They seem to get stopped pretty short.
.

Meh. We could land and get stopped shorter than those guys.

quote:

Originally posted by mojojojo:

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
Except for the boat guys with the little hook at the back. They seem to get stopped pretty short.
.

Meh. We could land and get stopped shorter than those guys.

Ya, but you don't get arrested for it.

Apparently if it takes full power to taxi you'd better lower the landing gear.

The crew briefed the approach, configured the airplane, ran their checklists, and was was cleared to land by the tower.

"It's going to be tight," the captain noted.

Upon touchdown, both pilots applied maximum braking, causing tires to burst and wheels to glow orange, then catch light. Full flaps, full reverse, spoilers deployed, the aircraft ground to a halt in a cloud of smoke.

"My God," the captain muttered through the sweat pouring from his brow. "That's the shortest runway I've ever seen."

"Yeah," mumbled the first officer, glancing out his side cockpit window. "And the widest, too..."

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:

Apparently if it takes full power to taxi you'd better lower the landing gear.

Troof!

Our Little Airport, a few years ago:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ugh, yeah, I swear I did the landing checklist and had 3-green...

(not just a General Aviation thing either).



The F-14 pilot got the callsign "GULF" = Gear Up Landing Fentress (Fentress was the outlying field south of Oceana NAS where it occurred).

He did the "Oh Shit" after touchdown and dropped the handle - day late and a million dollar short.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Troof!

Our Little Airport, a few years ago:

About fifteen years ago, my wife and I were walking across the ramp at a tanker base and some guy was doing touch and go patterns in his Mooney. He was one of those hotshots that would wait until very, very short final to drop the gear, and who would suck it up right after breaking ground. He was flying patterns that were a continuous turn to final from the downwind, with his final somewhere around 150' in a turn to touchdown.

I commented to my wife that she was going to see a gear up landing. Not a minute later, there came the familiar sound of twelve hundred pounds of beer cans being scraped under a truck, and lo, and behold: the mooney was skiing sideways down the runway on its belly. It came to a rest as I fished a fire extinguisher off the truck and ambled over.

The pilot, apparently a joint owner of the airplane, opened the door and stood up on the wing.

"God damn it!" He screamed, at no one in particular. "That's twice!"



The field had a drop zone, and we rounded up a bunch of jumpers who had nothing better to do, and lifted the airplane by hand. He dropped the gear...which functioned just fine when the handle was actually in the down position, and helped him push it off the runway to a tie down spot.

I think that the Mooney on our runway is a C model. I believe that those had the "Johnson Bar" to extend & retract the landing gear.

100% mechanical, human powered, not electric nor hydraulic.

Yep. The gear goes up and down fast, under genuine bungee power.

It's that snappy up and down motion that leads some to walter-mitty it and drop the gear late and raise it early. I've seen some who think it's neat to put the handle up and let it snap up as soon as the airplane breaks ground. Stupid, but it's said in some circles that a smoking hole in the ground is small price to pay for a cool picture.

Suddenly, I'm feeling better about my recent one-bounce landing.