Gear Up!

Rob,

It was a bit of a party trick to select the gear up whilst the aircraft was on the ground. It would not retract until the weight-on-wheels switches were triggered but it enabled a rapid and snappy take-off when displaying an aircraft, with the gear going up immediately by itself, and that was probably what was happening here.

The only problem was, if the switches weren’t rigged properly or some such similar malfunction, the gear would start retracting as soon as the selection was made resulting in a very red face and an expensive repair – oh, and a bit of explaining to do:o

And for those who didn’t know, or notice, it is the cockpit of this Phantom (XV490) that was displayed at Newark’s Cockpit Fest event last year. Hopefully, it should be still there for this year’s event too:)

Anon.