Cessna's TTx is powerful, sleek and high-flying.
But wait — they forgot to retract the gear!
Key Takeaways:
Historically deemed essential for high-speed aircraft to minimize drag, the performance advantage of retractable landing gear is now less clear, with many fast modern and homebuilt aircraft successfully utilizing fixed gear.
Actual speed gains from retractables are often nuanced by other design factors and can be offset by well-streamlined fixed gear, while complex retractable systems themselves can introduce drag and significant costs.
The overall complexity, manufacturing, maintenance, and insurance costs of retractable gear can make simply adding more power to a fixed-gear aircraft a more practical and cost-effective solution, despite some pilots' aesthetic preference for retractables.
“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.
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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.
