john smith wrote in message ...
Snowbird wrote:
AFAIK, I fly a plane whose stall speed is *higher* than an Arrow's.
90 mph
....
I target final approach at 80 mph, 75 if it's just me and partial
fuel.

Note thaty the original poster stated airspeed in MILES PER HOUR not
knots.

Yes. Note that so did I.

90 MPH is about 75 kts, which is okay.

Well, I've never flown an Arrow -- as I said up-front.

I calculate 90 MPH as 78 kts.

What is Vso in a Hershey-bar Arrow? www.risingup.com gives
one 180 hp model as 53 kts. Using the 1.3xVso rule of thumb,
that suggests an approach speed of 69 kts or about 80 mph,
which is my target.

Note that the original poster also said he was adding 10-15 *kts*
of extra speed to compensate for 10 kt gust.

The Arrow has a healthy sink rate the requires some extra speed
initially to keep the sink rate below 500 fpm.

Well, like I said, I've never flown one, but it looked to me
like it had the same wing as the comparable PA28-180 or Archer
of its year. Why would it have such a high sink rate vs. these
planes?

Cheers,
Sydney