Piper Arrow III

[TEXAN AVIATOR]

Our home base airport is at 5640' not extremely high although it's in a valley with peaks up to 13500' surrounding the field; and I've been taking the Arrow up in the mornings due to high-density altitudes at the airport. The MOST climb I'm getting out of the 200hp Arrow is 250' FPM. Keep in mind this is only with 10gal in each tank. It's pretty scary when your rollout to Vr takes longer than a Citation at our airport; and climb in normal patterns is not possible.

I'm coming south to CFI soon and was interested in the climb of this A/C at sea level. How much of an improvement is the performance?

TA

 

[bigD]

How hot is it in the mornings there? 250fpm seems pretty anemic given the situation you've described. What does the book say you should be getting?

 

[TEXAN AVIATOR]

With our density alt generally around 9000' by about 11:00MDT, the chart says that my climb is about right. A little lower than it should be. Although I've talked to a few CFIs who say it's downright dangerous; one said he took it up at about 15:00MDT this summer and hit a thermal at about 1500'AGL with the plane at Vy it was losing 500'FPM.

I'm really just wandering if it's an enjoyable aircraft at sea level.

 

[Visceral]

Isn't a thermal a body of rising air? Why would he lose altitude?

 

[TEXAN AVIATOR]

Isn't a thermal a body of rising air? Why would he lose altitude?

Where there is lift; there is sink in general…

 

[bigD]

I've flown an Arrow IV in more reasonable situations, and it wasn't bad. I remember flying it years ago out of El Paso in the Summer (with a DA of about 7K), and it was fine, if I recall.

It was no speed demon - kinda like flying a low wing, t-tail 172RG. The turbo version was quite a bit better, obviously!

 

[KnowledgeSeeker]

I used to fly out of an airport at 5288ft with days during the summer that exceeded 90deg F (4700ft field). Flown both 152's and 172's out of there and managed much better than that (well, not much..) Also took a 172 out of leadville in the summer wich has a traffic pattern of 11,000 ft. msl, not to mention the density altitude in the summer.

I have not flown an archer out of these places, but going by the performance in these planes you should be doing much better. Therefore i would say that mabey your airport has an area of sink that's common to the end of the runway. The runway i fly into now has a downdraft when your at about 75ft on final everday, which would be a surprise if you were new to the airport. Also what kind of leaning procedures are you using on take off? Also with 13,500ft peaks surounding the airport i would wonder what the winds aloft were doing in terms of up and down drafts off those peaks. When i used to fly into glenwood springs in colorado the winds would get pretty wierd in that tight valley.

 

[tarp]

The Arrow III is no performance craft.

Summer day (30C-90F approx) you'll see an initial 500-600fpm with the gear out and about 700-750fpm with it sucked in.

Winters with temps around 5C-25F, you may get to see it peg a 1000fpm (well in the first thousand feet).

If you are only used to high altitude, get ready - the plane will seem more powerful on liftoff. However, landings are going to seem a whole lot shorter and slower. Suddenly, you now can entertain thoughts of landing on a 1900ft strip with a ground roll of something like 600ft.

Enjoy. Most flatlanders have problems going into the mountains but I've never heard of a mountain flyer having problems with sea level (other than boredom).

 

[KickSave]

I fly an Arrow III a lot from a 430' MSL airport, and depending on the temps, my climb rate will be around 600 to 800 FPM at Vy (90kts) with full tanks and two average sized occupants. It's certainly not a rocketship, but it's performance around sea level is acceptible. Ground rolls are decent also, a little higher than a 172 but not excessive. Tarps performance numbers are about what I get, in the range from SL to about 5000'. It's a bit of a turkey, but it handles nice

 

[Immelman]

I've been very unpleasantly surprised by the 200-hp Arrow-II's high density altitude performance... it can get scary.

By contrast, the turbo arrow IV is a very nice airplane. The max power limitation is 41" if I remember correctly. I can't remember critical altitude for the TSIO360, but I do remember climbing smartly near gross on warm summer days over 14000' without any problems.

 

[labbats]

Just flew our Arrow III up to 9000' MSL on a hot day from Nebraska's 1050' MSL airport. The climb is good up to 500' or so, but it dogs out after 7000' pretty bad. Seems normal. You gotta figure you're losing 1" manifold pressure for every 1000 feet above sea level, so, you've got quite a bit of power loss to begin with. Make sure you've got your leaning procedures down like someone said above, and that's the best you can do, other than fly earlier or later when it's cooler or more of a headwind. Sorry, I'm rambling.

 

[Cardinal]

The aircraft performs more like a blunt instrument than an "arrow" at altitude or at heavy weights. It would appear that lugging that gear mechanism to altitude exacts a large perfromance penalty, and that big fat wing doesn't make things any easier. Yet at low altitiudes, even on warm days, the aircraft is comfortable to instruct in. With two people, full tanks and summertime OATs you can easily perfom touch-and-gos on a 3000 ft runway. The embarassing bit about the Arrow is that a 172 can outclimb it in most circumstances, and the 182 with just a few more horsepower can leave it in the dust. And the Skylane accomplishes this while offering much more cabin space and the simplicity of fixed gear.