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
Yes that would work if you could figure out how to get an
airport data base. Way back when GPS was new I could get the
FAA data base on nine track tape from Ross Perot's old outfit
Electronic Data Systems. They had the contract with the FAA to
maintain it. I used it to write my moving map software
that ran on DOS. There was a couple of articles in Kitplanes
in 1989 and 1990 about my moving map software.
I still have a nine track tape reader in the hangar. I have no
idea how one obtains the data base today. Perhaps Jeppeson will
sell it.
Paul Lamar
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Another system to warn of ground proximity might be to incorporate a
Laser Rangefinder. Prices have been dropping on these instruments
with their gaining popularity in hunting and outdoor sports.
Joel
Being within a certain distance of an airport (quite a large database
IMHO) would not cover a possible emergency landing which is a time that
a pilot's attention is in many different areas.
Allen Slominski
Houston, TX
The FAA airport ASCII data base, if zipped with the blank spaces removed,
will fit on a 1.6 meg floppy disk.
Been there done that.
Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.
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