by ludomotico » Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:17 pm
I used to fly a PA-28 in real life. Probably (but I really don't know), the operation of a PA-24 is similar but the speeds may be different. On the PA-28 I used to fly, flaps were actuated using a lever very similar to a car hand break with two intermediate stops. You were able to lock the lever at four stops: no flaps (lever on floor), 10º, 25º, 40º.
According to the checklists I used in the PA28, the recommended speeds during an approach are:
- 80 KIAS and faster: flaps 0º (downwind and base)
- 75 KIAS: flaps 10º (base and final)
- 70 KIAS: flaps 25º (final)
- 65 KIAS: flaps 40º (very short final)
As you can see, these speeds are very close together and flaps are in one of the intermediate settings only during a few seconds.
An operation manual for the PA-24 is surprisingly hard to find in the Internet. The only reference I can find to this issue is Wikipedia: "The flaps were manually actuated, controlled by the same Johnson bar actuator as the Piper Cherokee (PA-28)". Hence, the operation of the flaps might be similar.
If this is the case, and please notice the "if", the designer of the aircraft for FlightGear might be unaware of the four possible flag settings. Assuming this is a bug, it is something easy to fix in the xml file that describes the PA-24.