Cessna's TTx is powerful, sleek and high-flying.
But wait — they forgot to retract the gear!
Key Takeaways:
Historically, retractable landing gear was deemed essential for high-speed aircraft due to drag reduction, a belief now challenged by modern fixed-gear designs.
Advances in fixed-gear technology, including efficient fairings and thin, strong legs, have significantly minimized their aerodynamic penalty, often allowing them to outperform or match factory retractables.
The article suggests that the manufacturing, maintenance, and insurance costs, combined with the inherent drag of certain retractable components like exposed oleo struts, can diminish the practical advantages of retractable gear over optimized fixed-gear systems.
“Landing gears are made retractable in all modern high-speed airplanes. The drag of fixed ‘under-carriages’ used in old-type, and still in small and slow airplanes, is avoided in this manner.”
Thus wrote Sighard Hoerner, the great compiler of drag data, in 1951.
CREATE A FREE ACCOUNT
Sign up to keep reading
Create a free account to continue. Already a member? Sign in below.
Peter Garrison taught himself to use a slide rule and tin snips, built an airplane in his backyard, and flew it to Japan. He began contributing to FLYING in 1968, and he continues to share his columns, ""Technicalities"" and ""Aftermath,"" with FLYING readers.
