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Not an ICON SeaRey!

Make sure you keep your finger on the landing gear light until you get what you’re looking for! Happen to me in flight. The nose gear fuse blew.

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Hope all worked out and it was resolved before landing. Thanks for the reminder!

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Fortunately it did. Quick swap of 7.5 amp fuse and I was back in business. Why I train my students that the landing gear handle is your “Nemesis.” ALWAYS hold finger there until you get exactly what you expect or it could get ya!

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Excellent! Great pics too. Thanks for the update.

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Any idea why the fuse blew?

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I’ve got annual coming up and it will be looked into. 2nd time it’s happened too. First was in water, below 10kts, preparing for controllability check before ramping. This time I was inside white arc and was lowing gear in flight for photos.

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I’d be interested to know. I believe it’s a bit of a known issue as well. Has your nose landing gear received all the updates?

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Yep, I’ve followed all the inspections. Very weird.

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This happened to me this past Saturday after doing some water flying.

I've submitted the below info to ICON as well:

Here is my hypothesis on the failure mode for the nose gear fuse observed to have blown on moving gear switch to down/land position - I believe it starts much earlier than the actual gear-down request:

HYPOTHESIS - GEAR DOWN FUSE BLOW

- In flight prior to event
- Plane is maneuvered in positive G's (up to 4 allowable without flaps)
- Downward moment (torque) produced on nose gear
- Nose gear deflects actuator just enough to release full-up detection switch
- Since panel gear switch is still "water/up", the actuator activates as it's now perceiving "RAISE GEAR" situation
- The increased load from the +G prevents the activation of the detection switch
- Competition between moment/torque and actuator causes 7.5A fuse to blow
- Fuse failure is not noticed unless you happened to be looking directly at either the gear switch or the fuse panel during the maneuver
- Plane exits maneuver
- Gear-up detection switch is re-activated (since the actuator didn't actually move, it just deflected and is now out of +G)
- Actuator stops trying to lift gear since detection switch is closed
- Fuse will now appear ok since the fuse will only illuminate when it is receiving power from actuator but the actuator is now idle so fuse is dark
- Gear switch will show "water/up" as detection switch is closed
- (more flying, and everything "looks" ok, but fuse is covertly blown)
- Later, airport (land) approach (or other reason to extend gear)
- Gear switch set to "land/down"
- TRANSIT illuminates and stays there
- Fuse (now lit) observed to be blown
- Change of fuse "magically" solves the problem

Thoughts?

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...the key here being that I believe the fuse is blowing earlier but in a situation where it would never be noticed (if you're pulling G's and you're looking at the landing gear switch or the ceiling of stowage, you probably have bigger issues...)

...it also isn't obvious that the fuse can only be observed to be blown when the circuit it is protecting is actually active.

The good news is this seems easy to verify.

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Interesting thought. Could be. Now for me, on first occurrence, I had water landed and idle taxiing when nose gear would not go down and the fuse was illuminated and replaced, on second weeks later (after hrs of flying) I had just done a splash and go and was wings level when I lowered gear and nose gear didn’t come down and I had to replace illuminating nose fuse again.

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Same situation as me: I was on normal approach to the airport when my gear did not go down and fuse illuminated.

...But I am suggesting that the fuse had already been blown in flight before that - question is, did you maneuver above 1.5g when flying just before?

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It's an ICON and it's so much fun, so guilty as charged

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You're good up to +4g (flaps up) so bring it on!!! I love doing -0.5g for a moment - makes me giggle like an idiot LOL - and btw the fact that the gear has a +1.5g transition limit suggests that if the detection switch opened, the actuator would certainly be overloaded at > +1.5g...

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Totally!!!

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Have any of you had knowledge, issues or incidents with the magnetic reed switch design? As I understand it, you can check alignment with a 0.163 core pin.

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Well the "gear gremlin" now has me grounded. My MLG wouldn't come down in preparation for ramping the other day. Went through two 15A fuses, jumped in the water to ensure there wasn't some "stick" lodged up in there (dang that was cold!), and then burned through a third 15A with no luck. Finally resorted to using a 20A to get it down in order to ramp. Figured that in the unlikely event that it started an electrical fire we would both swim for shore if we couldn't put it out quickly.

Anyway, we jacked it up and put a meter on it and it is indeed pulling about 20A when beginning to retract. Haven't tried to re-extend yet since I wanted to inspect some more first. Im going to pull the E&E panel to see if there is any evidence of binding on the actuator. Can't see how this could be a limit switch problem since the high amperage draw occurs during the beginning of the retract and then diminished.

We are gonna run the "Landing Gear Excessive Friction Check" procedure from the MM but wondering if any who have been experiencing these type issues with either NLG or MLG have any further insight as to a fix for the issue.

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I’ve had nose gear fuse blow on me 3 times over the last year on extension. Finger on the light saved me each time!

mechanic could not figure why it did it. Checked swing and tension both fine.

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Hey Erich. Did your mechanic actually disconnect the linkage and check everything? I had not noticed until this morning that the MM actually has this procedure now to disconnect the linkage and swing it manually to check for binding. Not too bad to do with the NLG but from what I remember about how the MLG is hooked up I am not looking forward to this.

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I'll check. I have a 100hr coming in about a month or so, might be a good time to do check that.