Thanks! Hopefully the FAA will be pragmatic in it's findings and recommendations.
Thanks. With 30,000+ of them out there it's obviously not a major design issue with the PA28, if ERAU is packing 50 landings a day onto these things then there will certainly be some faster aging items
I don’t know but I bet they are looking at it real close now.
Stop telling those lies. ERAU is the best place to learn how to be a real pilot.
the key is not to "exceed" the limits during operations......
Meh it’s just a little good natured ribbing. A select few of their graduates get out into the industry and act like gods gift to aviation while possessing skills and knowledge that barely meet the minimum standards to pass a ride. They are bad enough to give them all a bad rap. The other side of it is that the training program is highly structured. That’s good and bad. The most one dimensional and naive pilots I have ever flown with were university grads that went straight to an airline AND never took it upon themselves to fly outside of the school/airline environment. It was funny watching some of those guys trying to do a visual approach without any vertical guidance from an approach. Kinda like watching a squirrel try to figure out a squirrel proof bird feeder.
Cool, thanks for the input! Other than RG and a different powerplant aren't the wings virtually identical between an Archer and an Arrow?
I understand the sentiment that the last thing that should fail is the wings, but everything needs to be put into perspective. All materials and items will eventually fatigue and fail, there is not material on Earth that does not have a breaking point.
Ofcourse not, everything ages and gets old. 2006 for a plane is not old however.. nor is the idea that a trainer will be used for.. well.. training, and may age faster than the plane that spends 90 percent of its time in cruise on long XC. If the rumor about 10,000 hr wing replacements at ERAU is true, then maybe that number should be 7,000, or like others have said, factor in landing cycles.. which is not hard. Every time I fly I fill a paper sheet out in the airplane showing the TACH and HOBBs, this has been the case in every plane I have ever flown. I also always fill out my logbook with the number of landings I did. Very simple, just include a landings column on that sheet in the plane. May not be an exact science, but if after 15 years you see that your airplane has been landing 50,000 times that may be a hint that you should be looking at some deeper structural elements, and not just having your buddy Larry sign off on the annual once a year (or the 100 hr).
The wing doesn't need to be stronger. The gear is too strong. Bumpers on cars crumple and absorb the impact first so the driver doesn't feel. The steering column collapses so it doesn't impale the driver.. etc. Some pretty straightforward solution would be to have the gear bolt onto the spar with sheer pins, and bolts that will show signs of stress and deformation; these are commercially available, and would make it pretty easy at annual (or 100 hr, of even preflight through a small inspection window) to see how much stress the wing or gear joint has gone under. I'm not saying overhaul the whole PA28 fleet, that's crazy. But if we're designing new things and trying to advance aviation for the better I think that's a pretty pragmatic solution vs just saying "well we can't make the wing stronger then it won't get airborne" (you didn't say that, but there's a sentiment out there that echoes this
You might have the right idea, but I don't think weakening the gear is a good idea.
I love it! That's exactly the kind of innovation I'm talking about. There are industrial applications where glass tubes or other things break first to indicate something has been overstressed, or has been subject to too many hard cycles. Etc.
And the FAA would take 5 years to approve it and make it cost $2000.
If teaching steep turns, I’d go with 45 degrees instead of 60 degrees. Then, no more than 2 landings in the pattern. You’ll be fine.
