When to retract the gear?

[Kevin McDole]

I'm with Rick on this. Since the gear retraction cycle is something like 13 to 18 seconds, an engine failure during retraction would result in a negative rate of climb.

I wait until I'm at least a few hundred feet up before I retract the gear. When it finishes, I then retract the flaps. At 500 feet I then do the power reduction.

I suppose there might be an argument for raising the flaps earlier - perhaps one a positive rate of climb is achieved.

Incidentally, I once had a squat switch fail in such a way that when I retracted the gear, the doors opened, but the gear did not retract. And using the gear switch, there was no way to alter this configuration. I simply stayed in the pattern and landing this way. Had an engine failure occured in this time, it might have gotten interesting.