Ask My Sky Mom. Aviation wit and wisdom.

Hey Mom,

I thought you needed a complex endorsement to fly planes with retractable gear, but my friend says you don’t always.  What’s up? Who’s right?

Thanks,

Excited about Endorsement Eccentricities

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Hi there, my eccentric new friend,

Your friend is righter than you are, this time, but I bet you won’t guess why.  To require a complex endorsement, the airplane in question must have 3 things going for it, once of which is retractable gear.  The other two requirements are movable flaps and a constant speed propeller.  If any one of those things is missing, the endorsement is not required.  A couple of examples of aircraft with retractable gear that aren’t actually complex are the Long EZ (Rutan’s popular homebuilt) and the Culver Cadet.  There are others as well.

While we’re at it, let’s briefly revisit the concept of “safe” versus the concept of “legal”.  Sure enough, as far as the feds are concerned, a Private Pilot Certificate with an Airplane Single Engine Land rating is all you need to leap from your Cessna 150 to, say, a Velocity (another home built based on the Long EZ).  Your insurance company might beg to disagree, and I sincerely hope your common sense will, as well!  Whenever we have retractable landing gear, systems knowledge and emergency procedures require more of the pilot.  There’s a lot to know about those new moving parts on that plane of yours!  So please, make sure you get some training and a proper checkout even if nobody will tell you that you strictly must, even if no new endorsement is required to fly that puppy.  You’ll be a safer and more confident pilot for it.

Gear down and locked,

Mom

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~ by myskymom on July 10, 2009.