F-5E landing gear doors

[duesensegler]

When you do a cold start, your landing gear doors are open at the beginning and close up once there is hydraulic pressure. I was wondering how to get them back open once the aircraft is shut down. One way I found to get them to drop open is to activate the emergency gear release on the ground and then just reset the emergency gear release but that can't be the correct procedure, right? Is there maybe a hidden handle that opens the uplock latches for the landing gear doors like on the p-51 or am I missing something else?

[bbrz]

There is no other way to open to gear doors from the cockpit and it's not required or standard ops for the pilot to open the gear doors when leaving the airplane.

If you use the D handle, it's a good idea to install the gear pins beforehand ;)

In some (much bigger) planes there's a switch/handle in the vicinity of the gear bay to open the main gear doors.

[r4y30n]

Shouldn't they drop on their own as pressure bleeds down? The inner doors on the P-51 work like that and take a few minutes to droop after shutdown.

[bbrz]

Shouldn't they drop on their own as pressure bleeds down?

No. The doors have uplocks like the gear itself.

[tom_19d]

I was wondering how to get them back open once the aircraft is shut down.

 

The landing gear door switch on the F5E is in the right main gear well. Selecting the "OPEN" position on this switch allows utility hydraulic pressure to open the gear doors. Obviously this switch is not accessible to our virtual pilot. (Interestingly enough, some T38's have this switch in the cockpit behind the throttles where the F5 damper panel is located.)