Paul,
While my aircraft was a mono, the combined flap / undercarriage lever had the
standard
detents which held the lever either at fully retracted or fully down 27
degrees. When I decided after almost 20 years flying as a mono to convert to
tri-gear, Neville Eyre told me to support the aircraft in order to partly
retract
the gear and use a clinometer to measure an intermediate flap position of
18 degrees. While the flaps were at that angle, I leaned into the cockpit and
marked on the slotted guide plate the position of the lever.
Neville then cut the guide plate in situ to create an intermediate 18 degree
detent
notch, which happens to lie approximately halfway along the slot. Thereafter
we set about removing the mono-wheel swing arm, linkage and other unnecessary
components to leave just the lever connected to the flap push-pull rod.
Why Neville specified 18 degrees is something I never questioned, but we use
that
intermediate setting for take off on the assumption that it reduces drag while
still augmenting low speed lift. It also occurs to me that if there existed
a graph or table giving different Vfe speeds for various flap settings, then
the Vfe for 18 degrees would be considerably higher than 83 knots; perhaps a
lot closer to 100 knots.
That was a long-winded explanation where I could simply have replied 'as well
as'.
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http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=502218#502218
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