Subject: Gear Warning device.
From: Rotary Engine
Date: 1/17/2007, 9:10 AM
To: AARotary Engine



   Friend of mine just landed his fine airplane gear up.
   How about all you single chip microcomputer programmers out there
   build a gear up landing alarm.

   If the RPM is below 4000 and during the last three
   15 seconds consecutive periods the altitude has
   steadily decreased and the gear is still up turn
   on the alarm.

   Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.


   That could work. Or how about taking GPS output and alarm if the
   plane is
   within, say 1 1/2 miles from an airport, and less than 1000' AGL and the
   gear is up.

   The AOA pro is nice; so are radar altimeters; but we need something for
   about a third of that cost.

   Al



   Paul,
   Al Wick has already done this, his system shows you how to build a
   system that will check and log anything that you want using off the
   shelf equipment.
   http://www.maddyhome.com/canardpages/pages/alwick/index.html


   Regards
   Andrew Martin

   Well Al Wick does mention it but he does not say what logic he
   uses to warn of gear up when landing so I don't think he has
   it implemented yet. It does not appear to be linked to a data base.

   Al Gietzen is suggesting knowing at what airport you are near and how
   high you are above the airport to warn you about the gear.

   Here are a few screens from my moving map software written
   in the early 90's. Kind of crude but it was written in DOS days.
   Ahead of its time :) I used an early Lowrance boat GPS receiver
   that put out only an NEMA 0183 RS232 ASCII data stream.

    From this FAA data base you know where you are and how high the
   airport is so you can be warned on approach about the gear.
   --
   Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.


I would think that one could use a simple microswitch(es) with AND/OR
logic.  Flaps Down Full AND Gear Down(after 30 seconds+/-) = Green to
Land.  Flaps Down AND Gear Up (after 30 seconds+/-)=Red Flashing Light

Allen Slominski

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