Cessna near Gympie

[spinex]

Local news had vision of a buckled 172 (I think) at a private strip near Gympie - apparently 2 locals in their sixties came unstuck whilst approaching for landing. Word from bystanders is that they clipped a fence, barely cleared a creek and crunched into the bank on the far side. Both a bit bloodied and dented but otherwise ok.:ouch:

[Squawk7700]

Pics here

Cessna falls spectacularly from sky (http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/a-plane-carrying-at-least-two-people/news-story/f03124fbd41eb2b40cde551c71ad059e?from=public_rss)

[Sunfish]

that will buff out

[Menko]

Spinex,
The article stated it was a Cessna 182 (Skylane) not C-172 (Skyhawk).
Not that it matters, but......
Cheers,
Menko

[spinex]

You joined just to tell me not to bother buying the anorak?:D

[Capt Fathom]

Who'd have thought? Landing with full flap! Hardly an original concept!


PS. The post my comment was based on has been deleted!!

[Dora-9]

Whatever else went wrong, he can't blame the weather! A lovely cool, calm sunny day with no wind...

[Avgas172]

The missing post Fathom refers to was mine, regarding the apparent use of 40 deg of flap in the accident aircraft. As Fathom clearly has superior knowledge about the use of full flap (depending on the aircraft make may be up to 40 deg) I did delete the post in order to avoid the inevitable crap that then goes on. Most instructors I have encountered do recommend not using 40 deg of flap on Cessna's (like mine) due to the high power required to overcome the drag caused by the use of 40 deg of flap causing a high sink rate, of course Fathom would know that's probably why Cessna reduced the amount of flap available to 30 deg on later models. This in no means suggests that the accident aircraft did have that issue as I have no data to prove or disprove any causal factors, and in the original post my statement was simply that my 172 with 40 of flap falls like a brick with full flap deployed.

[DeRated]

a '59 182 wow!

With manual flap.... bewdy.

Once electric flaps became the norm (with slower extension/retraction) the max flap was reduced to 30 degrees (to keep the weeds out of the wheels).

The 40 degrees doesn't cause a high sink rate if you are using it correctly - ie. over/past the fence as an air brake, but that's easy with manual flaps. Selection of 40 with electric flaps requires a finer judgement and a probable application of power on short final, especially if an area of sink is encountered/anticipated.

[gassed budgie]

Cessna upped the max takeoff weight in some of their aircraft back in 81/82. The aircraft had to meet certain performance targets after a go around with full flap. One way to achieve that was to limit the full flap travel to 30°.

There was also an issue with pitch instability under some circumstances in 172's at low airspeeds with full flap (40°), hence the 30° of travel in the later machines.

So should one use full flap as a matter of course? Cessna says nothing of the sort. The POH for the 172/182 simply says 'flaps - as desired'. The amplified section of the POH is almost as simple. Something along the lines of 'normal landings can be made using any power setting, with any flap setting desired'.

[Sunfish]

wot gassed budgie said. those last ten degrees are useful at times.

[spinex]

wot gassed budgie said. those last ten degrees are useful at times.+1 I had to park a misbehaving 150 on what turned out to be a downslope and was very grateful for the extra 10 degrees of flap to stop the thing from gliding.

I did witness the down side of that though, a newly minted PPL taking dad for first flight decided to go around from an unstable approach on short final - fuse promptly popped when he tried to retract flap and after staggering most of the remaining length of the strip he chopped power and dropped in from the 20 or so feet he had maintained down the strip.:{