Zzz, I am well aware of your position on the 'disruption of continuity' when someone deletes a post In the future I will do better at reviewing my ramblings before hitting the submit So to all that have suffered from the diruption of flow, zen, and harmony, I apologize

In this case after reviewing what basically amounted to my opinion of ones personal responsibilities while operating someone else's equipment I decided it did no better at answering the OP's question than EZflap's thesis on 'the decomposing fleet of Cessna's in modern times', nor the lame one liner blurts of 'get a new CFI'. In fact after looking this thread over again, I could not even find a question in the OP's initial thread, save "is this common?", and my answer to that is ; in reviewing the Cessnas on the line at our local airport and seeing all the concave'd flap bottoms, cracked flap trailing edges, and loose flap tracks... yes, yes it is very common .

OTOH, if the young OP was really wanting to learn something from this flap oddity I submit he probably would have learned more by digging deeper into the owners reasoning for having him do so. It very well could have been that the owner was in need of some mechanical education. It could have been that the owner "a high time CFI with every rating in the book" was interested in observing the young pilots ability to handle the aircraft when configured outside of his normal comfort zone, who knows?

Oh, and as far as personal opinions, if this forum had a 'like' feature i would have 'liked' contact flying, flightlogic, and PatinLoco's posts. They are my opinion of well thought out good responses to the OP's 'question'. As I read them, in a nut shell, they all say 'do the right thing' both legally and morally. What a concept?

Take care, Rob

shortfielder wrote:

Flaps?

They make planes w/o flaps?

and let me tell you... they really make fools out of those of us that have been spoiled with flaps all our lives

Rob wrote:

shortfielder wrote:

Flaps?

They make planes w/o flaps?

and let me tell you... they really make fools out of those of us that have been spoiled with flaps all our lives

The Stearman (coolest plane ever made) of course has no flaps, so you get real good at slipping or you land long and fast. Funny thing is I have a hard time slipping the 185 cause it feels so unnatural with the yoke, and by not doing it I'm cheating myself out of one of the best ways to control rate of descent, especially power off. Not to mention the coolness factor since most pilots today have never even seen a slip to landing.

Sorry for the rambling, Rob just got me to thinkin.

Slips are good, but the best way to get down w/o flaps is not geting so high to begin with. Above 200' it looks like you could really hurt yourself if you fell out. Even the really high flyers start down from a hundred miles out. Saves fuel and easier on the engine.

On the first annual after I bought my airplane, I had to have the right side flap re-skinned, due to cracking on the upper skin. My IA told me that it was caused by lowering the flaps at too high an airspeed. I knew that I hadn't done that in the months that I'd owned it, but he said the damage (weakening) could have occurred well before I bought it. He also said that it's a common issue with Cessnas. His answer to avoid it in the future is to honor the white arc--and I do! In fact, I don't drop flaps until I'm well under the top of the white arc.

I also think it's really poor piloting to use the flaps to slow down. The airplane should be already at the proper airspeed, not using the flaps as air brakes to further slow it. Sure, the barn doors work well to maintain that slower airspeed in the descent, but using them to slow the airplane initially is inappropriate.

Cary

Cary wrote:He also said that it's a common issue with Cessnas. His answer to avoid it in the future is to honor the white arc--and I do! In fact, I don't drop flaps until I'm well under the top of the white arc

My Maule was the first plane I ever flew with manual flaps. I was really surprised at the difference in force needed to put the flaps down at higher speeds. Unless circumstances demand otherwise, I wait until I'm well into the arc now.

Cary wrote:I also think it's really poor piloting to use the flaps to slow down. The airplane should be already at the proper airspeed, not using the flaps as air brakes to further slow it. Sure, the barn doors work well to maintain that slower airspeed in the descent, but using them to slow the airplane initially is inappropriate.

Pilots are cheap bastards. Put it in terms they understand. If you are using flaps to slow down it's costing you gas money.

Some of my funnest flying adventures have been in flapless aircraft like our ultralights or Champs or J3's. But while slipping is good time, but it won't let you fly any slower. This got me to thinking about another topic from early in the days of this website:

http://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/airspeed-during-forward-slip-59

Belford D Maule designed his airplanes with many interesting devices probably guessing how future pilots would treat his airplanes.

From 1980 onward, with the advent of his torque tube flap mechanism, he built in a spring cartridge which collapses the spring if the pilot overspeeds the flap positions.
POH allows down flaps at 90 mph whilst common sense tells a thinking pilot, that will be good for the first notch of 24 deg. To be kind to the airplane the thinking pilot will deploy next notch of 40 deg at 80 mph and 48 deg at 70 mph.
However BD did not trust the pilot to think, so if one flies faster than those speeds and deploys flaps, they will not come fully down as the strain is absorbed by the spring cartridge.
The flaps will be following down as the airplane is slowed.
Full down 48 degrees is not achieved until 55 mph.
Many Maule owners do not know this concept and wonder what is going on as they attempt to land too fast with the flaps easing down behind the speed reduction.
Additionally the Maule can be slipped with full flaps if one wants to., however a very nice steep angle of descent can be achieved if the airplane is slowed down enough.
At or before touchdown the flaps can be instantly changed from 48 degrees down to -7 degrees up, immediately killing all lift and actually producing a semblence of downward lift onto the tail.

Interesting, I feel the sameway as Barnstormer, it was natural as walking to slip with a stick in my old citabria, with a yoke in my stinson, it just does not feel the same, or as natural. I can and do slip the stinson all the time, just not as nice of a feeling.

So I talked with the CFI today and mentioned something about the flaps at high speeds, his thoughts on it is 85 is for full flaps and putting down 10 faster wont hurt. and when I said something about 110 he said the plane can't go that fast. I think we'll all are in denial at some time.

Asked about the hot final and he has concerns about wind shear. I think after talking to him I will be able to fly a bit slower.

I was hoping to go fly some thursday with him but his plane has 3 planes tightly packed in front of it now and he didn't put them in so he doesn't want to pull them out.