The title of this column is "Gear Up" because I like the symbolism of takeoff and flight. It means to me the moment just after positive rate has been established when, with a short upward pull by the pilot, the airplane is reconfigured, while accelerating, to assume the shape it was designed to have: sleek, dragless, efficient and fast. Many airplanes, ours included, spend much more time on the ground than in the air, with their legs stiffly sticking down, waiting patiently to be stowed. Stowed at that just right moment, when the last available runway disappears beneath the nose and the airplane gathers up its appendages and heads up and out. We're off.
I like the reassuring clunk of the gear doors as they close and the way the "gear unsafe" light winks off. I like the sound the airplane makes as it gets clean. I also like the double meaning of gearing up for a flight. It bespeaks the care of planning, the study of The Weather Channel, the call (or two) to the Flight Service Station, the calculation of the winds aloft, the preflight, the pre-takeoff checklist, the whole getting-ready-to-go part of flying.
More than one wag has suggested that "Gear Up" represents a long history by this author of landings made with the wheels inadvertently forgotten in their wells. If so, I think, the column should be called "Gear Down," as a reminder. But more about my gear experiences in a moment.
Not all airplanes have retractable gear, and there are lots of good reasons for this, not the least of which is you don't have to remember to put them down. Maintenance costs are less; the chance of malfunction is less. In some airplanes stowing the gear doesn't really add much speed, so the tradeoff for risk and cost isn't worth it.
Fixed gear can be sturdy. I started out in a Cessna 150 (not a 152) and I know it had forgiving gear. Thirty years later, while watching my wife learn to land in a 172 of a certain age, I know they still make forgiving gear in Wichita. If you spend a few minutes at a flight school and watch the pounding those trainers take, circuit after circuit, you come away with a new respect for the design and construction of landing gear. This is why the English call touch-and-goes circuits and bumps. You also marvel at the patient forbearance of most instructors and the superior design of the resilient human body. Even a terrible landing rarely results in emergency splenectomy.
In 1976 I purchased a Piper Arrow, in part because the wheels came up. This was the perfect transition to retractable gear. There was a fail-safe mechanism that dropped the gear below a certain airspeed with the power back, so it was unlikely that I'd land with the wheels up. The airplane wasn't all that fast and I don't remember any concern about having to slow to safe gear extension speeds. Nor do I remember any great pitch or speed change when the gear was lowered. I do remember the thrill of having that little round, wheel-shaped lever on the panel, though. It was cool.
