gear down speed: early vs. late skymasters

[gevmage]

Originally posted by kevin
...and the pressurized model needed a way to get the airplane down relatively fast in case of a cabin decompression. Cessna's solution was to make the maximum gear extended speed essentially the same as Vne (the red line, or never exceed speed)...
Kevin

Ah-ha! Yes, that was precisely the information I was looking for. That's interesting--they needed to have a way to add drag to lose altitude fast without overspeeding (to bleed energy, basically). Instead of adding something to do that (like a speedbrake), the gear and body were strengthened so that they could provide that function.

Learn something new every day. Thanks!

Craig Steffen