In article ,
"C J Campbell" wrote:

Most of the problems that I have had on Cessna 172s have been with
flaps. I
agree that pilots should verify flaps up on touch and goes.

Cessna used to have manual flaps. Why did they ever go to this flakey
electrical system in the first place?

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...

I did my initial training in Cessnas, and "verify flaps retracting" was
drummed into me as part of the touch-and-go procedure.

Now I fly mostly Pipers. I really like the manual flaps instead of
Cessna's electric ones, and curse the electric trim Piper uses instead
of Cessna's manual trim system.

Simple stuff just works better.

How exactly do Piper manual flap systems work then? We have a Piper Twin
Comanche with an electric flap system. The flaps are pushed down, but come
back up using springs, in effect after latches are removed. We've now had
two asymmetric flap retractions, where one of the springs failed to do its
job. This is Not Good.

So when you lower the flap handle in a manual Piper system, does it drag the
flaps up or does it merely take the latch away and allow the spring to do
its job, as in the electrical equivalent?

Julian Scarfe