SHAPE CODING

[John Sinclair]

One of my lasting soaring memories is watching a ASW-20 land at Calistoga, Ca. It looked like a perfect landing, one foot in the air, flaps down, doing about 40 knots……….perfect! But it didn’t touch  down, it just kept floating one foot in the air! As it passed me I saw the gear partially retract then lower back to half-down position! THEN IT FLEW RIGHT  INTO THE PERIMETER FENCE!

The pilot had ahold of the GEAR  handle, thinking it was the SPOILER handle!

Much has been written about how to solve the problem, but there is an area I haven’t seen addressed. It’s called SHAPE CODING ! Why not make the shape of the handles different? In many ships the handles are all located in the same general area and sometimes Evan the same color (black).

How about;

GEAR…………..ROUND

FlAPS…………AIRFOIL SHAPE

SPOILERS……RECTANGULAR 

I have some ideas on how to modify the existing handles to achieve the desired new shape……could cover them with large heat-shrink………….bet a clever guy like Rex could even come up with a way to make Spiffy new handles?

;

[Charles Mampe]

I did the same (in a ASW-20) after I got hit with turbulence on short final. Hand came off spoiler handle and landed on gear handle. Good thing I did a smooth landing on grass.

You can get urethane and silicone casting kits on Amazon in different hardness's. I'm sure you could come up with something. Ideally, there is a consensus on design of each handle.

I mostly fly a standard class glider now, spoiler on one side, gear on the other side.