Boxer! By saying Vmax I meant the maximum speed for the current configuration, be it Vfe, Vle. I am talking about the bottom of the red and black barberpole, wherever it is at the time. The comment about Alpha lock comes from your comment on it in a previous post, regarding the auto retract system. You mentioned the stress on the flap system and then talked about 'Alfa lock' as another consideration. But Alpha lock only relates to inhibition of slat retraction in a low speed/ high AOA situation and that confused me a bit , I guess,since we were talking about the auto retract in relation to high speeds/ exceeding flap limit speeds.And this is a slat function only, not the flaps. S speed is constant for a given weight. If you take off at max gross on a A320, the tables list S speed as 214 kts for that weight. For 150K pounds it lists at 200 kts etc. Sure, you will burn a few hundred pounds by the time you get there, but unless your weight drops to less than 166K pounds , your S speed will be above 210 kts (remember, this is a performance book exercise here) , and 210 kts is listed as the speed at which the flaps start to auto retract ,not the slats since they stay out until you move the handle to Config 0 . For our exercise: we weigh 167k pounds right this moment, S speed is 214 kts, we reach 210 kts, the FLAPS start to auto-retract, the SLATS stay where they are. We reach 214 kts, S speed, the MINIMUM speed to initiate SLAT retraction.
We move the handle to position 0 and the SLATS now retract, while the FLAPS are either up already or still retract, don't know if the auto-retract system retracts them quicker than the normal process with the handle.