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3 Answers

When to retract on takeoff

Asked by: 3298 views Student Pilot

CFI's #1,2& 3 said to retract the gear as soon as you have positive rate... CFI #4 says wait until you have no more usable runway, then retract the gear and flaps up... Any suggestions? Thanks, Jeff  

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3 Answers



  1. John D Collins on Jan 05, 2016

    I am mostly in the camp with instructors 1,2, and 3. I prefer to get as high as I can as soon as I can and want to accelerate to a best climb speed with the gear retracted. If the engine does fail after liftoff, it is much more difficult than it seems to get stopped on the remaining runway. With the gear up or down, you will have to react almost immediately to lower the nose (maybe as much as a 15 degree difference) to avoid a stall and with the gear down, you have even less time to make the pitch change. Also you will be closer to the ground in most cases if you leave the gear down.

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  2. Mark Kolber on Jan 06, 2016

    If CFIs 1, 2 and 3 do that in a Cutlass – “as soon as you have positive rate” – they are in for a bad surprise and the drag of the gear retraction lowers them back to the runway while the gear is about half way up. The point of that is that different airplanes are different and a technique that will work with one may not work quite as well with another.

    My real answer, though, is that this is a technique issue about as silly as “kick and crab” vs “slip all the way.” They are both variations on the same thing, and very minor ones at that.

    Observation for a few years suggests that many “usable runway” pilots wait until long after there is no usable runway. Usable runway is enough runway to reduce power, set up a power off glide, descend, round out, land and stop before going through the barrier on the other end. That’s a lot of runway. Except on very long runways, for even the slowest common retracts, that not much time after positive rate, maybe a couple of seconds? I doubt those few seconds are going to make much difference one way or another.

    BTW, if you really want to see there is no substantial difference, just look at John’s post. Notice that his reason for choosing positive rate is the same as mine for saying it doesn’t matter.

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  3. John D Collins on Jan 06, 2016

    Mark’s comment is one of the reasons I used the weasel word “mostly” and he is the lawyer. 🙂

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