IIRC the Stirling had electrically actuated u/c and it was terribly unreliable and having refurbished one of the gearboxes, unnecessarily heavy. lThe manual lowering of the u/c works in almost exactly the same way as the Herc in that a locking pawl is disengaged allowing a handle to be rotated. A job to be given to the lowliest member of the crew/erks (delete as applicable:diablo:)