cannot raise landing gear in King air 350
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I cannot raise the landing gear. I can move the handle up but nothing happens and lights stay green. Is there something else in this steam gauge version that needs to happen in order to raise the gear.
I fly the stock msfs asobo king air 350i and have no issues with the landing gear.
I have no failures listed either. was wondering if the steam version has additional functionality that I am not doing in order to raise the gear. -
Last night I tried setting up a flight with everything already for take off and on the runway. Flew a quick pattern and the gear worked fine.
I think it is something I am not doing in preflight when starting from cold & dark. maybe something electrical that enables power to the landing gear? but I do not know. I do try to follow the lengthy checklist but must not be doing something right.
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@oldsimmer said in cannot raise landing gear in King air 350:
Last night I tried setting up a flight with everything already for take off and on the runway. Flew a quick pattern and the gear worked fine.
I think it is something I am not doing in preflight when starting from cold & dark. maybe something electrical that enables power to the landing gear? but I do not know. I do try to follow the lengthy checklist but must not be doing something right.
Hi, di you managed to makeit work correctly ?
I encounter this problem once. I'm not sure what was the reason, unfortunatly I do not master the electrical system at all, but I'm pretty sure it is a result either of a bug nor a bad handling of the plane. (random/schedules failure where off)
According to the manual, Landing Gear Motor is powered via the Hot Battery Bus.
You can manually extend the gear, but not manually retract it.
At some point just after take off, I realized the Battery Tie Open alarm
The manual doesn't explain what this alarm is exactly related to, but we can assume this is a disconnection of the battery bus somwhere. The battery tester showed 0V / 0A.
The strange thing is that the center bus should be able to power the battery bus when L/R Gen Bus Tie are closed (yellow circle on image above) You can test this by manually during a flight by turning off the Battery Master switch and close the Bus Tie Controler : rectract/exctract gear still works !
But in my previous situation nothing worked so I assume either the battery bus was destroyed, either it was a bug.
It would be good to have some explanation from Black Square here. ;) -
Ok, I think I've found what happened but I'm not able to reproduce it 100%, so it still could be a bug.
To avoid fuel consumption, I usually power up systems (GTN750 + radios + lights) and fill flight plan before starting the engine. This drains the battery power. If you do the full checklist you might also be in the case where you use significantly the battery before starting up the engine.
In that case, when activating L&R generator, the battery will drain current to recharge itself. You can monitor this with the electric meter selector on the battery position. Here it's approx. 20A (which is a lot) :
This might turn on a yellow alarm "Battery Charge" :
The manual :
"Battery charging rate is correctly simulated in this aircraft, meaning that the battery charge rate in amps is
proportional to the voltage difference between the aircraft generators and the battery. Battery charging rate should be kept to a minimum whenever possible, and takeoff limits should be observed. If the charge rate exceeds 10A for approximately 60 seconds, or 60A for 10 seconds, the BATTERY CHARGE annunciator will illuminate. This is acceptable after startup while the battery is recharging; however, care should be taken while taxiing to avoid overcharging the battery. If the battery charge current is in excess of 10A for an extended period of time, heating the battery, the battery will eventually become disconnected from the electrical system due to an overcharging failure. Be sure to monitor the battery charging current during ground operations to ensure the charging current is decreasing, and has approached zero before increasing engine power."And my supposition is that the "overcharging failure" is in fact the disconnection of the whole Hot Battery Bus ! And the gear motor ...
This would explain why we can't power the Landing Gear Motor using the Center Bus. That means in that case, you won't be able to retract the landing gears and will have to return to the airport, or fly <180kts.
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@elglon I managed to go through the checklist and take off. Gear worked ok.
I think your in depth explanation for the electrical/battery may explain a lot. I am probably putting a big drain on the battery causing the issues. something that may not be modeled in the stock 350.
Thanks
Jeff