Why Was The PA32 Lance T-Tail so UNPOPULAR?

welcome back to Dead stick Adventures today we're delving into the Intriguing world of the piper teail Lance it's an airplane that when it taxies onto the ramp definitely spark some conversations and turn some heads not always good ones but was it Piper's boldest Masterpiece or was it a design disaster stick around and let's find out the verdict on this unique [Music] bird with here at command flight training with this 1978 pa32 rt300 tail Lance come on you got to give me a thumbs up for remembering that mouthful the pa32 is of course the model RT R is for attractable T is for tail then we've got the 300 being a 300 horsepower donk up front we're going to go over this plane inside and out and teach you a bunch of things that you probably didn't know about this six-seater Piper masterpiece the piper Lance began as a humble Cherokee 6 with fixed gear and of course we've done a video on the Cherokee 6 and it was a naturally aspirated Engine with the same fuselage then some ingenious mind probably in the marketing department at Piper recognized the need for a swift retractable single to take on the bonanzas and Cessna 210 of its time so we had the straight tail Lance in the Lance one and then the Lance to Piper wanted to make their G airplanes look super special they put the teail on on and we had the infamous Lance 2 and let's be honest they do look pretty cool but as with any design change on airplanes all design Changers have their drawbacks and we'll delve into the nitty-gritty of why the teail was good and it looked cool but why it wasn't so good on an airplane so the Tew Lance had its moment in the sun in 1978 and 1979 and then Piper finally figured out that it wasn't such a good idea and they went back to the straight tail lances and now onto our plane Tango Lemma golf a 1978 Piper Lance 2 with the teail now fish your eyes on the turbo version complete with a front end that I reckon resembles a hungry goldfish it's not just a quirky fashion statement it's rocking the updraft cooling system as for the performance they say it's a star but fair warning you might find yourself giggling every time you walk up to that unique front end Piper went for distinctive and I reckon they nailed it now to drag this aerodynamically challenged airframe through the air with it's big thick High left wing Piper introduced or Enlisted the PowerHouse of their operation the io 540 that's a 540 cubic in 6-cylinder engine M to a three blader prop it's got 300 horsepower but you know what they say two for go three for show so the Cherokee 6 really set the design standard for these aircraft with this beautiful cow design that's the same cow that you'd find on an Archer so of course the oil doors in the different place we've got these rounded intakes and that nice bulge up the top there which accommodates the io 540 beautifully and it's a little bit ungainly on the Lance but here's your main air intake for the engine it's not symmetrical but you know what it's a big powerful engine so I think we can forgive Piper for that clocking in at a respectable 145 knots Taz down low and a little better than that up high the Lance was Nimble but it wasn't quite as quick as the speed demon successors like the Saratoga or even some of the straight tail Lance versions now let's have a look at one of the quirkier versions of the Lance the pa32 RT 300t and you thought they couldn't squeeze any more letters into that name so moving after along the fuselage we find the nose Locker it's a really good place to keep things like cow plugs your oil any spare Rags any bits and pieces that you need and it acts as a damper between the engine and the cabin which cuts out quite a lot of the engine noise and moving along we've got this nice big thick Hershey bar Wing So a relatively thick camber and a short span and the fuel system is pretty unique in these they've got two tanks that are plumbed together with only one filler so they work together and they're essentially just two tanks out of a Cherokee so the two tanks from a Cherokee were interconnected and they functioned with only one filler now what's interesting about these is you can be looking at bare metal but still have half tanks in this so obviously you can dip the outboard tank but you can't dip the inboard tank so they provided us with a lovely little sight gauge and if you've ever looked at one of these with the sight gauges you'll notice that there's a bit of a problem with most of the sight gauges for these inboard tanks with the two Cherokee tanks in each Wing the Lance has 96 Gall usable which is good for about 5 1/2 hours endurance let's have a look at the undercarriage so the undercarriage is robust mechanically simple and it's the same as what you'd find on a senica or on an arrow it's great for rough runways she's got these big 6x6 Cleveland wheels up the back on the mains and up front a 5x5 so it's got Alo struts and a nice wide stance like all Cherokees which means it's nice and stable when you're Landing in a crosswind we've got this heavy steerable nose Gear Up Front you've got a big heavy engine sitting on top of a relatively small wheel because it's steerable that means a thing handles like a truck with no power steering on the ground let's talk about the tail that decided to go Rogue in theory moving the stabilator up to the top of the tail and making it 1/3 smaller would make it faster lighter give it less drag and less vibration from the propeller slipstream sounds great on paper in practice it didn't work out quite so well instead of the expected performance boost we ended up with a tail that was really a bit camera shy until we hit Runway speeds that felt like a rocket launch resting in takeoff distances that left us looking at the Horizon for just a little bit uncomfortably too long and then of course there was the pre-flight rituals can you imagine reaching up and trying to brush snow off of that top teail it's just not going to work fortunately in Australia we don't have to battle that kind of thing sales took a dip and Piper realized they' played a little bit too much teail Tetris in 1980 they did a big old yourturn and they put the stabilator back where it probably should have been all along lesson learned so with our rear passenger door and then our cargo door there's tons of space to put in whatever you need for your Airborne Adventures it's like the unsung hero of the piper family it wouldn't be everyone's first choice but hey it's got some character opening the door you get this surprise burst of sour green pickle colored upholstery in 1970s finest vour it makes you wonder if they rated The Pickle Factory for inspiration on interior colors despite the ey searing green color these seats are actually pretty PL and comfortable and they're in exceptional condition for a 45y old aircraft bracing the philosophy of making every inch count in the Lan's wider fuselage you get this big space between your seats it's the perfect spot for placing your flight bag in fact some people have even put an electric fridge between the seats and there's a really nice console add-on that you can get that allows you to put your stuff in there typical Piper Dash but of course we've got a wider fuselage 5 in of extra space so we' got two columns in the center here over on the left standard six-pack VR ADF receiver and then of course we've got the engine instruments down the bottom here just like The Arrow so on takeoff you're doing a dance between the runway air speeed engine Runway air speed engine gear lever throttle lever prop pitch lever and mixture and then of course we've got all our airs on the right hand side it's got a little dinky storm scope which kind of works which is nice transponders down here the rest of it normal Piper stuff and of course course down the bottom here we've got our flap handle standard Piper stuff three stages of flaps got our fuel selectors apart from the ey searing and slightly sickening PE green color in here I'm pretty comfortable I've got plenty of ventilation I've got an overhead map light got some ventilation up here some vents on the floor even got some curtains keep the sun off and take a little nap now of course the big six-seater Pipers can all be configured for Club seating so we can turn these two seats around and then your rear passengers can face each other nice to be intermingling legs while you're on a long flight and this is where it gets really good in these rear seats I'm super comfortable if there's no middle people I can stretch my legs right out sit here comfortably little bit limited on Headroom but I'm 6t and I can pretty comfortably sit here for a while all right that's enough being comfortable I think it's time to take it for a fly and get some good shots for you guys so there you have it the piper Lance 2 teail a design disaster absolutely not but a sales disaster or let's just say they didn't exactly fly off the shelves so these can be had for bargain prices in the used Aviation Market if you don't mind a bit of a challenge and you've got a longer Runway to play with it's perfect but if Money Talks I think I'd take a straight tail Lance over the TAA tail any day thanks for watching we've got lots more awesome videos coming out about all types of different GA airplanes make sure you give us a like give us sub a subscribe and leave a comment about your favorite bit

Channel: Deadstick Adventures

Views: 7,037

Keywords: piper, cherokee, privatepilot, pilot, aviation, generalaviation, cessna, diamond, cirrus, oshkosh, commercialpilot, privateplane, learntofly, firstplane, piperlance, piperpa28, cessna172, skyhawk, backcountry, kitfox, trentpalmer, skywagonuniversity, piperarrow, pa28, pa28arrow, complexaeroplane, aeroplane, privateaeroplane

Id: ZVw44GeGFMU

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2024