"Now, let me see....this time its water, leave it up. Next time its pavement, put it down, hey look at that pretty bird, and these mountains are awesome.....whats that threat over there I see...gotta watch out for that log, those rocks, wind shear along the cliff there...." is what would lead to a gear down catastrophe. A new environment with an interrupted thought. very sneaky and incidious.
Mirror mirror on the strut, should my gear be down or up?
I think MAYBE if I marked the gear lever as "Water / Pavement" I might catch on after a few errors. We gotta know our own collective limitations, folks. It does no good to send an arrogant message of stupidity. We gotta understand why....why so many. Who's doing it, why are they doing it, Whats going on, what training will prevent it. But for the grace of God, there go I.
Absolutely on your last statement, but it's not stupidity and it's not arrogance.
Frankly, I think all the bells, whistles, bitching Bettys, etc, etc MAY in fact be counter productive. They give the pilot a false sense of security.
When I started flying an amphib, it was a Beaver. The only gear warning system was a pair of mirrors, one under each wing. The gear system was manual, as in a hydraulic pump, and it took a few pumps to get the gear up or down.
The fellow who checked me out in that plane initially, and a couple other old time Goose pilots who gave me recurrent rides in it, tried REALLY hard to get me to make a mistake with the gear. Like really really hard. Distractions by the dozens, even messing with the gear selector when I wasn't looking, ad nauseum.
By the time they were done with me, I simply couldn't take the gear position for granted, ever.
That's the key: You have to KNOW you're capable of doing it...of making that mistake and landing gear down in the water. You CANNOT tell yourself you'd never do that.....because you could, and you might. I know to this day that I have the capability of doing so....
Those thoughts have to be in the forefront of your mind prior to landing. Passengers talking? Before modern intercoms with the "mute" function arrived, I'd just tell them to please be quiet.
NO distractions, EVER, of any kind. If you get distracted, go around, get it together and do it again.
We used the mirrors because they require you to take an ACTION....you have to move your head, look out the windows, focus on those little mirrors, and make an assessment. No Bitching Betty that's really easy to silence or just ignore.....but doesn't REQUIRE you to do anything.....too easy. Oh, and mirrors seldom fail......electricity take a dump? Mirrors still tell you where the gear's at. Have a failure of some kind? There are failures in some of these systems where a gear can be down, but the gear indicators show UP. Seen one of those on a 206.
Bottom line: Operating an amphibious airplane is easy. And it can be VERY safe. But, it requires one thing of the pilot: Discipline. EVERY landing, no exceptions.
When Jack Corey finished checking me out in that Beaver, he told me: "You're a little paranoid about that landing gear. And, that son, is a very good thing-don't ever lose that paranoia".
Many years later, I did a SES with a good friend in a Cub on amphibs. I thought we did a good job. Months later, he called me one day, he'd been taking his young grand daughter for a short hop in his Cub on amphibs. Just take off from the airport, a mile or so to a big lake, and land in the water.....all the while talking to this young lady about the magic of flying-her first ever flight in a plane. You can guess the rest. Fortunately, they were in relatively shallow water, and he was able to get out and help the girl out.
So, I failed him as an instructor pilot....I failed to instill that bit of paranoia in him that Jack had put firmly in my head. I felt terrible, and still do. I can't imagine this gentleman's horror after committing that error. And, yes, he had a gear indicator system, with all the bells and whistles, and he managed to ignore it.
MTV