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Piper PA - 24 flaps

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Piper PA - 24 flaps

Postby Couchflyer » Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:33 am

Re Piper PA - 24
quick question. Are the flaps only either up or down on this airplane, with no intermediate settings? Using computer keys they can be set at any angle, but using joystick or Saite k yoke and quadrant buttons they apply fully and are either up or down. What is the system in the real airplane?
I believe older Pipers had a mechanical lever, later replaced with electrically operated flaps, but I have found no info about intermediate flap setting during an approach. If the flaps are only applied fully, at what point of the approach or landing pattern would they be deployed?
Thanks for reading this
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Re: Piper PA - 24 flaps

Postby 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.
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Re: Piper PA - 24 flaps

Postby dilbert » Sat Aug 25, 2018 12:31 pm

check out www. comancheflyers.com/comanche-tips/ and select comanche-tips Flight Peformance.
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