The last line of defense for general aviation pilots

Back in 2015, Nidal Robb was transitioning from a slower airplane to his high-performance Lancair 360.

Knowing he needed a bit of help judging his height while landing, he and his colleagues at Microkit Solutions developed the Landing Height System, which calls out altitude during the landing sequence from 200 feet down to 1 foot.

A pilot and A&P/IA, Robb soon began receiving requests from other aircraft owners and flight instructors, who realized the device would be “very helpful for students to correlate between what they are seeing and what they’re hearing,” he says.

From 2016 to 2019, the new product was installed on more than 500 experimental aircraft.

Then, following requests from pilots and aircraft owners for a similar system for certified aircraft, in 2019 the company began looking into what would be involved in getting FAA approval.

FAA officials in Chicago, where the company is based, recommended getting approval through an initiative known as NORSEE — Non Required Safety Enhancing Equipment.

Since the device doesn’t attach to anything in the airplane, it was a “perfect fit” for NORSEE, Robb notes. After getting NORSEE approval in late 2020, the company began selling the device in January 2021. Since then, it has been installed on more than 1,300 airplanes.

Robb is quick to point out that the Landing Height System is not designed to teach pilots how to land.

“It’s the other way around really,” he says. “We’re pilots. We already know how to land. A big part of flight training — or maybe our entire training — is how to land the airplane.”

Instead the device is designed as an extra level of assurance that the landing is on track.

That’s especially important at night, Robb notes.

“If you’re coming in at night with low lighting conditions at the airport, it’s going to help,” he says. “If you get distracted, it gives you that extra aid for a safe landing.”

How Does It Work?

The device, which fits in the palm of your hand, contains a laser, an audio circuit, the main board and more. To power it, you hook it up to your intercom and hear the alerts over the intercom to your headset.

The laser continually monitors the airplane’s height from the ground.

“When it doesn’t see the ground, it knows you are flying,” Robb explains. “When it starts getting hits from the ground, it builds a profile of the picture it’s seeing. Once you reach 200 feet — the limit of the laser — it starts making announcements at 200, 100, 70, 50, 20, 10, 5, 2, and 1 foot.”

Why those heights?

“During the first two years of using the device on experimental aircraft, we did over 5,000 landings just to try to come up with where the announcements should begin,” he explains. “All of the data we collected shows that those are the best numbers.”

Realizing they could enhance safety even more, the company went back to the FAA in 2022 asking to add a landing gear warning to the device.

“We know that we can add an extra level of safety to pilots by having an extra wire that hooks up to their gear down and locked indicator,” he says. “Once a unit sees the ground and sees that the gear is still up, it starts ‘yelling’ to check the landing gear.”

Known as the 200 series, the new device gives a “proper” gear warning, according to Robb.

“Why do we call it proper? Because a lot of gear warning systems, even in big airplanes, like the TBM, are based on your throttle position and your flaps. And we do get some comments saying that ‘but sometimes I’m coming hot, I’m coming fast, I don’t have flaps.’ Then the horn or whatever the manufacturer installed in the airplane to warn them the gear is still up is not going to work until it’s too late.”

But once the Landing Height System 200 sees the ground at 200 feet and the gear is up, it will keep repeating every four seconds to “check landing gear, check landing gear, check landing gear,” he says.

“It’s voice, not a horn or a beep, which gives it a higher chance of being noticed,” he continues. “We don’t want to say 100%, because there’s nothing 100% when people are distracted.”

Hearing the message — over and over again — is important because of all the “bells and whistles” in today’s cockpits with glass panels, “people tend to tune out the beeps and flashes,” he says. “Before if you saw a red light, it was really a warning. Today, people don’t notice that because there are too many lights.”

Installation

The device is approved for all general aviation airplanes as a “minor alteration.” That means no Form 337 or other hoops to jump through.

You can buy the device at LandingHeight.com. It’s $1,065 for the 100 series and $1,165 for the model with the gear warning system.

Because it falls under NORSEE, all you need is a certified mechanic to sign off on the installation.

According to Robb, it takes about six to eight hours to install the device, which includes cutting a hole in an access panel so the laser can see the ground, then hooking the device up to the power and audio channel. If you have the device with the gear warning system, you also have to attach a wire to your gear switch.

The device has been installed on a wide variety of general aviation aircraft, from Cessnas, Pipers, Mooneys, RVs, and more.

Most of those planes are in the United States, but the company has sold devices to customers in other countries, including Australia, Canada, and those in Europe.

From Airlines to GA

A “huge percentage” of the company’s customers are former airline pilots, according to Robb.

They tell him they got used to similar devices at the airlines and told company officials they want any device that adds to safety, “especially if I have my family in the airplane.”

He adds that a “big selling point” for the device is for pilots faced with landing at unfamiliar airports.

GA pilots and student pilots who primarily fly around the patch at their home airports can find themselves overwhelmed when flying to a different airport, he notes.

“You can easily recognize that if you get used to a 70-foot runway, because this is your local runway and you’ve been training here for the last 20 hours with your instructor, once he sends you off to a different airport with a bigger runway you will have a different site picture. So you will probably flare higher than normal and that causes accidents.”

“It’s not going to kill you, but it’s going to cause an incident,” he continues. “If you flare two feet above your normal flare, you may bounce, you may hit the landing gear, you may crash one of the mains, or you may hit the prop.”

The Landing Height System removes all that uncertainty, he explains.

“It tells you five when it’s really five feet beneath you, it tells you two when there’s really two feet beneath you,” he says.

And for those aircraft owners who also have the gear warning system, the device is a “last line of defense” in case you forgot to lower your gear.

“If you look at who’s been landing gear up, you will find that it’s not only those with no experience. You’ll find people with 10,000 hours of experience flying the same airplane, and sometimes they get distracted and end up landing with gear up. And they’ll tell you afterwards, ‘I just didn’t notice. I tuned it out.’ So that’s a big thing.”

Now Introducing

The company has just released its newest product for general aviation pilots, the Audio Checklist, which allows pilots to store their own checklists in voice format.

Pilots can use their own voice or a computer generated voice, according to Robb.

The new device gives a pilot full control over all the different checklists. For instance, on one checklist you can set it up so that you must click the next button before moving on to the next item. On a different checklist you can run through it with just a one-second pause between items.

“For example, if somebody wants a final check before takeoff, you just click the button for the takeoff checklist to be sure you’ve covered everything,” he says. “Or just before touchdown, you can run the GUMPS or other checklists.”

Because the checklist is heard — not read — the pilot can keep his eyes front and center, not down reading a checklist.

Even better, the device includes a dedicated emergency button.

“Once that’s clicked, the emergency checklist will be played,” Robb says. “It’s a very fast, convenient way of picking up the emergency checklist.”

The device, which hit the market in July 2024, is priced at $435.

For more information: LandingHeight.com