Gear down?

[Guest JamesA]

Hi,I know this may seem like a trivial question, but it's an important one nevertheless.At what point should the gear be extended. According to the PMDG manual, it's when the GS is active, which tends to be quite far out. I've heard in other guides that it should be around 5nm from the threshold.James

[crvm 0]

One dot on G/S, flaps 15, GEAR DOWN - should work...Randy J. Smith

[SAS263 1]

What randy says gives you a good baseline that works well. In the real world the answer is... It depends ;) I know that some airport procedures i.e. ESSA have you maintaining 160kts to the outer marker which means that the planes have been fully established for some distance. Since that OM for one of the runways (26) is located smack in the middle of where I play golf I know for sure that many airplanes lower their gear at that spot including B737s. I guess the reason is to not be "draggy" before it

[marcom 139]

It also depends on the weather.In IMC conditions, most airline SOP's require you to be fully established and configured by 1000 ft AGL. If you try and maintain 170 kts till the outer marker, you have around 400 ft to get fully configured. That means around 30 seconds. So there the OM would be too late to lower the gear. You can lower the gaar at around 2000 ft above ground.In VMC conditions you have around 1.5 minutes after the OM to be fully configured. If the tail wind component isn't too high and you're flying a standard 3

[Guest JamesA]

Thanks to all that replied, however with regard to Mark's comment, isn't GS intercept usually at 3000FT at about 8.6NM (in the UK), so how can I lower at 2000FT when following the one dot GS rule?James

[marcom 139]

Hi James,of course you can lower the gear at 3000 ft, but then you'll be flying the final for ever. This would reduce an airport's capacity dramatically and use a lot of fuel.At busy airports, ATC may ask you to keep around 170 kts to the outer marker. Lowering the gear prior to this and you'll be the loudest slow moving object in the vicinity :-)Of course there are exceptions to this- any malfunction affecting flaps or gears- special ops, such as Tokyo where you have to extend the gear over the sea so as to not drop pieces of ice onto houses on the coastline!Regards,Mark