USCG gear down question?

[Diesel]

Just watching the USCG doing all the recoveries. Pretty amazing. They are getting some great fotage from another helicopter.

2 questions

1. Why do the USCG Dolphins leave the gear down when doing recoveries. Why not pull them up? Is this an emergency thing? When they do a rescue over the ocean do they put the gear down too?

2. The other helicopter that is shooting all the footage. The news was saying that was a USCG helicopter. Are they there to provide some sort of spotting for the winch helicopters? I know the door man pretty much tells the pilot where to go back forth left right.

pretty amazing stuff. the USCG really stepped up and took it to the next level on this one.

 

[FracCapt]

1. Why do the USCG Dolphins leave the gear down when doing recoveries. Why not pull them up? Is this an emergency thing? When they do a rescue over the ocean do they put the gear down too?

Two possible reasons. 1) Most retractable gear helicopters have a gear warning horn that sounds below a certain airspeed and/or below a certain radar altitude. Lower the gear, silence the warning. I don't know if any of the CG helicopters have this warning, or if they can be silenced without lowering the gear. 2) There is no performance penalty for having the gear down at slow speeds or hovering, so it may just be an SOP that anytime you descend below 200'(or whatever altitude they use), the gear comes down. This would help prevent gear up landings.

 

[9GClub]

This would help prevent gear up landings.

So would paying attention....... hahaa.

 

[NookyBooky]

So would paying attention....... hahaa.

Losing power at 50AGL would not alow much time to get the gear down. Unlike you, the poor fellas flying the USCG helocopters do not have the luxury omnipotent CFI's sitting next to them to save them from becoming a smoking hole.

 

[RJP]

My guess is that it's the rad alt issue. The come zooming around here all the time at low altitude over the beach, always with the gear down. They rarely slow down and don't hover so it must be an altitude-related thing.

 

[Huggyu2]

Why not leave the gear down? At 0-5 knots of speed, I'm thinking that drag is not an issue. Now, throw in all the above mentioned reasons.