Jose wrote:

Troll or real?


Real.

I've seen referencs to "such and such an aircraft has a flying tail". I
imagine it means "out of the slipstream", but it sound sort of dumb to
me. Is it more than marketspeak? Does "flying tail" actually mean
something?

They are also called stabilators (at least I think that is Piper's
nomenclature for the PA28 family). The entire horizontal tail moves
when youy move the controls vs. just the elevator on a traditional
horizontal tail. So, you are "flying" or controlling the entire
horizontal tail surface.

I'm not sure what the aerodynamic pros can cons are, but having flown
well over 100 hours in Pipers and much more in Cessnas, I haven't seen a
huge difference. The biggest difference I've seen in the Arrow I fly
now as that almost as soon as it touches down you lose a fair bit of
elevator authority and it tends to drop the nosewheel a little more
harshly than I prefer. None of the Cessnas I've flow had the tendency.
The nose would gradually drop with airspeed during the roll-out.


Matt