Conventional vs. T Tail, pros, cons?

Owned a PA32RT-300T (T-Tail Turbocharged Piper Lance) for years (~900 hours). Flying the T-Tail was a non-issue; don't believe any of the negative hype about the "tail dropping"; complete BS.

The T-Tail is AWESOME on the ground. No tail to smack into when your working around the plane, loading passengers, dorking around in the T-hangar.

If all things are equal I'd take the T-Tail personally.

How about a T-Tail Cessna!:yikes:
 
Some T-tailed airliners, seems to me, had deep-stall issues. The tail would get blanketed by the wing's wash at high AoAs and prevent stall recovery. How's that for being in style?

Dan

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I'm trying to figure out how the tail could be stalled and then magically unstalled when its angle of attack never changed? :dunno: (Let's assume for this thought exercise that the pilot simply held the yoke in the full aft position.)

Authority change, most definitely - I'm not a fan of the T-Tailed Pipers, though the DA40 doesn't seem to have the bad habits that the Pipers do. But I don't think it's a tail-stalled-to-unstalled issue on takeoff, because the tail has to have some authority before its AoA can change.

You may be right.

On the other hand, a stalled wing (or tail) still generates lift, just at a much lower CL than an unstalled surface. So a stalled tail may have enough authority to drive the tail down (and the nose up) enough so the tail unstalls and kicks in mucho downforce.

I promise, at least on the Tomahawk, the transition from not much elevator authority to a LOT of elevator authority is amazingly fast the first time you discover it.
 
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