Question: Behaviour of Laminar Flow Wings
About 3.00am this morning I woke up thinking once again about the slightly curious behaviour of the Piper Lance, an aircraft I have recently become aquainted with.
The one I was endorsed on has an interesting characteristic on take off, it sort of "porpoises" a little and does not really want to climb for a second or two after breaking ground - until it accelerates a little. It also glides like the proverbial brick.
I have also recently been taught by a highly experienced and respected instructor to land it from a much faster, shallower and more stable high speed approach (just below the flap extension max. speed), smoothly bringing the power back much later in the approach than I am used to and then making use of the aircrafts ability to generate huge amounts of drag very quickly as the speed washes off. The steep "Truck falling off a cliff" approaches I've used in other aircraft are a definite no no because the drag builds up very fast in the Lance as speed washes off, and trying to flare from such a steep approach is not a good idea.
The aircraft has always seemed slightly strange to me with its big fat wings, yet it slips along nicely at 160 KIAS seemingly effortlessly.
So anyway at 3.00am the words "Laminar flow wing" appear with a question mark. A quick perusal of the web this afternoon appears to show this is indeed the case. Everything else I've flown has conventional shapes as far as I know. The POH neglects to mention this difference, which at least on the surface appears to my engineers mind to be fundamental to the care and feeding of this aircraft.
Questions:
1. Does the apparent "porpoising" and unwillingness to climb immediately suggest either a dodgy oleos or am I lifting off too soon?
2. The landing technique I've recently been taught seems to work well because of the fast build up of drag on the back of the speed/drag curve of a laminar flow wing. Is this true?
The web is rather silent as far as I can tell about handling differences on aircraft with laminar flow wings. All advice would be gratefully appreciated.
Last edited by Sunfish; 30th Nov 2006 at 05:21.