flaps

On Jul 10, 6:51 am, Roy Smith wrote:


Then you should have gone around. Plan every approach to be a go-around,
and only make the decision to land when you get to the threshold and
everything is good.

Exactly. Most landing accidents happen when things aren't
coming together properly and the pilot insists on landing anyway. If
this runway had been icy he'd likely have written the airplane off.

Piper and Cessna took interesting divergent paths when they designed their
airplanes. Piper decided they were going to use electric trim and manual
flaps. Cessna decided on electric flaps and manual trim. In both cases,
each manufacturer added one totally unnecessary electric system and thus
saddled their owners with forever pouring money into fixing them. Maybe
the high-wing design made it difficult to engineer a manual flap control
linkage?

Cessna originally built their singles with manual flaps.
The 172 didn't get electric flaps until around 1967. The 180/185 never
had them. Those airplanes could be landed really short, because the
pilot could approach at minimum airspeed and dump the flaps instantly
on touchdown and get lots of weight on the mains for braking. Electric
flaps are too slow to retract.

In any case, if it's not the breaker, if could be the actuator
switch, the motor, one of the micro-switches that limit movement, or any of
the wiring in between. Just bring it to your mechanic with your checkbook
and let him put another kid through college :-)

If It's what I think and the airplane has the preselector-type
flap control, one of the microswitches on the lever follower is dead
or disconnected. They do that.

Dan

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:06:54 -0700, Dan_Thomas_nospam wrote:

Exactly. Most landing accidents happen when things aren't
coming together properly and the pilot insists on landing anyway. If this
runway had been icy he'd likely have written the airplane off.

I landed last week at CQX, a runway that (I've learned {8^) has a hump in
the middle. As I was coming down, I suddenly realized that I'd far less
runway than I thought I should have had. I probably could have put it
down in the remaining distance, but around I went.

As soon as I started climbing, the rest of the runway - hiding behind the
hump - came into view. I did feel a little silly, but I also welcomed the
practice.

- Andrew