The perfect timing for a gear failure

[gkey]

So there we were, my CFI and I, going through the different excersizes for my upcoming twin checkride, when it happened.

The departure went fine, and the gear retracted as usual on climbout. We arrived at the excersize area 8 minutes later, and hung around at 5500'. First we did the "slow flight, clean config". All went well, and we were doing 90 KTS (blue line) and holding altitude and heading. Then my CFI wanted me to extend gear and flaps and keep her in the 90 KTS/same ALT/same HDG. So, I extended the gear, let her stabilize a few seconds, and then lowered 1/3 flaps, and finessed her a bit to keep the flight requirements for this test.

CFI satisfied, and I retracted the gear. By this time (collectively 25 hours on this plane) I became used to the sound the gear motor makes, and this time the sound was higher pitched. There is also usually a little thump noticable through the right rudder pedal when the the gear retraction cycle ends. Usually it takes about 15 seconds to retract the gear, the little thump through the rudder pedal, and then the orange light. But this time the motor was still whirling after 30 seconds, no thump and the orange light (gear up) did not light up. I looked in the mirrors, and the gear was half way retracted with the doors still open.

Right or wrong, I flicked the gear switch to "gear down", but not a peep. No movement, no sound. I checked the breakers, and the most foreward one in the middle row (labelled gear motor) breaker had popped. I put "George" in command to fly the plane and hold ALT and HDG, and checked my POH on this issue. So the manual gear pumping began. We lost count after 64 pumps, but kept on pumping until the gear was extended, the doors were closed and our arms were falling off.

My CFI took over for the landing, and Kudos to him for the softest power-on landing I have ever witnessed.

On the ground we checked the hydraulic reservoir - it was still full. Then we looked at the logbooks just for tickle's sake. We noticed that the "RH upgear switch" had been replaced in Sept 2004, and again in December 2004. The last time an "upgear block" was also replaced. Does this bear any revelance to our incident? Or was the plane maybe unhappy with doing gear swings in mid-air, while hanging off the props in slow flight, angled at 30 degrees or more?