November 2004
Of the many variants of the basic PA-28 Cherokee airframe produced over the last 40 years, one stands out as a unique success: The PA-28R Arrow is today (and has been since the mid-1970s) the nearest thing to a standard complex single-engine airplane that we’re likely to see. Pilots moving up from fixed-leg trainers to their first retractables frequently get their training in an Arrow (unless they already own something else).
There are good reasons for this longevity: Among complex piston singles, the Arrow offers a useful combination of performance and range, in a simple well-proven design that’s about as safe as such airplanes can be. And because Arrows have been around so long, they’re easy to find, and can be cheap to buy. That’s the good news.
The bad news: Since Arrows make great trainers, unless you’re buying a new one, the odds are that any Arrow you find will have spent a significant amount of time in the pattern, with complex students learning the GUMP check reflex. A lot of Arrows have also been used as instrument trainers, and spent a lot of time flying holding patterns and approaches. What that adds up to is a lot of hours on the airframe, and frequently less than perfect maintenance.
I can speak about this from experience—I own N16460, a 1973 Arrow II that spent the vast majority of its 8,000-plus hours as a complex/instrument trainer. It’s my first retractable, and in the 200 or so hours we’ve been together I’ve learned some expensive lessons about buying, owning, and flying complex singles. In this article, I’ll try to pass as much of that hard-won experience along as I can. Hang on—it’s been a bumpy ride!
Arrow History
To understand the Arrow, you really need to know at least a little about Piper’s first complex single—the PA-24 Comanche. If you’re thinking about buying an Arrow I urge you to find a Comanche first and at least look it over (I actually flew one a couple of years before I started shopping for an Arrow).
You’ll find the Comanche a nice-looking airplane. Many people think they’re better looking than an Arrow, and I have to say I agree. What makes the Comanche so good looking is the low stance from its short landing gear struts, and a graceful wing mated to a nicely proportioned fuselage.
You won’t mistake it for any kind of trainer—the Comanche design just screams “let’s travel!” even when sitting on the ground. And it truly is a travelling airplane—among the most efficient for its time. There are still people today who think the original Comanche 180 is better than an Arrow, and the specs seem to bear them out.
The Comanche is about as fast, longer ranged (at least than earlier Arrows) and has a more comfortable fuselage with more room. While the Comanche is a truly great cross-country airplane, it’s not what you’d want in a trainer.
From Cherokee to Arrow
Meantime, Piper had a hit on its hands in the PA-28 Cherokee, which was first produced in 1961, originally as a basic four-seat, fixed-gear airplane with 150 HP Lycoming O-320 engine and a fixed-pitch prop.
Over time the engine got bigger, and the fuselage longer. By 1967, Piper was ready to make an ideal complex trainer—they started with the O-360 powered Cherokee-180, changed the engine to a fuel-injected IO-360, and added retractable landing gear and a constant-speed prop. The new airplane was called the Cherokee Arrow.
Bringing the Cherokee’s legs up made for an immediate gain in performance: The original 180 HP Arrow cruised at around 155-160 MPH, a good 15-20 MPH faster than the 180. It climbed better, with the constant-speed prop. And of course both features were ideal in a complex trainer.
The gear retraction system in the Arrow is electro-hydraulic: The gear switch actuates an electric pump to pump hydraulic fluid, which (in turn) retracts the gear—and there is no up-lock. The gear is held up by hydraulic pressure alone. That makes emergency gear extension in the Arrow about as simple as you could ask: Push down on the emergency gear extension lever (just above the floor on the left side of the flap handle housing) and a valve is opened, releasing hydraulic pressure on the gear retract cylinders. In just a few seconds, the gear falls free.
You may need to “fishtail” the rudder a few times to get it to lock, but there’s practically no way to have the Arrow’s gear stick in the retracted position. Moreover, this means students can practice emergency gear extension without having to take the airplane to a mechanic afterwards.
Since it was aimed at the trainer market—and at first time complex airplane owners—Piper added a unique feature to make the Arrow even safer. An auxiliary pitot tube on the left side of the airplane was connected to a diaphragm and (through a set of relay switches) to the landing gear. Chop the power in an Arrow and at 85-105 mph (depending on power settings), the gear will come down automatically. Long before that, you’ll get a flashing light and warning horn in the cockpit to tell you something’s wrong.
This system was not intended as a substitute for the GUMP check—but as a backup system to protect complex trainees (and their instructors) from themselves. Having the automatic gear feature put the landing gear down for you is just as embarrassing (but a lot less expensive) as landing with the gear up! The combination sounds just about perfect, and it was an immediate hit—but some thought it just a bit under-powered.
In 1969, Piper added a 200 HP model, using the IO-360-C1C engine. In 1972, the fuselage of the 200 HP model was stretched, providing more room in the back. The wings and stabilator were also lengthened slightly. This airplane is the Arrow-II, and is the type I own.
The next big change came in 1977, with the semi-tapered “Warrior Wing” of the Arrow III. Aside from the better slow-flight capability that wing offers, in the Arrow III it was combined with 78 gallon fuel tanks, giving the airplane an endurance of around 6 hours at cruise power settings—a big improvement over the relatively short legs of my Arrow II with just 48 gallons usable.
In 1979, Piper moved the stabilator to the top of the tail, creating the T-Tailed Arrow IV. I’ve flown one, and aside from needing to accelerate before the elevator trim set a bit aft of neutral (two healthy turns of the trim wheel works for me) or you may need to pull it off with the yoke, which isn’t good form.
Confirm a positive rate of climb, and then you can raise the gear (on a short-field takeoff) or flaps—one notch at a time. While the book says no flaps are used on a normal takeoff, a good many Cherokee (and Arrow) pilots use one notch.
Best rate of climb speed is 100 MPH with the gear retracted. At about 500 AGL, with the airplane “cleaned up” (gear and flaps retracted), most Arrow pilots set “climb power,” pulling the throttle back to 25 inches MAP, and prop control to 2,500 RPM. From this point on, in climb, you can advance the throttle as necessary to maintain 25 inches (I check it every 1,000 feet). At 5,000 feet, you can begin to lean the engine in climb (before takeoff, it should be leaned only if the engine is running rough, and then only enough for smooth running).
At cruise altitude, turn the fuel pump off, check to make sure that the airplane is indeed “clean” (if the airspeed seems low, check the gear and flaps) and you can trim for level flight.
A performance chart in the POH (or checklist) should give you a choice of MAP and RPM combinations for various altitudes and power settings. As a rule of thumb, though, most Arrow pilots use 2,400 RPM and no more than 24” MAP at sea level. The original two-bladed prop has a “yellow-arc” limitation from 2,150-2,350 RPM, so as a practical matter you have a choice of 2,100 or 2,400 RPM and appropriate manifold pressures.
Once leveled off, I switch fuel tanks, and make a point of switching them every half hour after that (when the big hand points to the left, I’m on the left tank and vice-versa) to even out fuel burn.
There are two schools of thought about descending in an Arrow, and times when each makes sense. My instructor taught me to just take an inch of the manifold pressure, and push the nose down to get a 500 FPM rate of descent. That will increase speed and get you home sooner, and it rarely pushes you into the yellow arc. I still do that when flying VFR—in fact, when I’ve got lots of room I may just push to 200 FPM (five minutes per thousand feet) to make the descent gentler and give passengers (and me) extra time to clear their ears.
On the other hand, if you’re an IFR pilot it’s only a matter of time before ATC asks you to “expedite descent.” Pushing the nose down more will get you into the yellow arc, and runs a risk of shock-cooling the engine. Instead, Greg Plantz at Proficient Flight taught me to pull the nose up and slow to 150 MPH (maximum gear extension speed) and then drop the landing gear. Once the gear is down, you can point the nose down to build up a healthy 1,000 FPM descent rate and you won’t get anywhere near yellow-arc airspeeds. If ATC tells you to level off later on, you can always pull the gear back up.
On a standard three-degree glideslope (or following an ILS) my Arrow seems to like about 15 inches MAP and one notch of flap. That gives about 100 MPH with the gear down and is nice and stable. Landings are easy, although it has taken me almost 200 hours to consistently grease ‘em (usually). The trick is to pull the power off gently, while rolling nose level—then keep pulling back (gently does it) to touch the mains down first. Keep pulling the yoke to hold the nose off and you’ll hear cheers from the passengers.
For short-field work, use full flaps and cut the power all the way as you begin your flare. And as tempting as it may be, don’t start reaching for any switches until you clear the runway and get the airplane stopped. It’s unlikely an Arrow pilot would mistake the gear and flap handles, but if you ever move up to an airplane with electric flaps that may change—and even in the Arrow, it’s too easy to do something silly like hit the master switch when you think you’re hitting the fuel pump (I’ve done it).
Cost of Ownership
If it sounds like I’m a fan of the Arrow—I am. That’s why I bought one. But I have to tell you that my experience has been a lot more expensive than I expected. That probably has more to do with the particular airplane I bought than the type as a whole… but an awful lot of Arrows have been used as trainers.
N16460 certainly was—it was purchased brand-new by a flight instructor back in 1973, and spent several years in Louisiana as a complex trainer. In the 1980s, it was bought by LeTourneau University, which upgraded the radios—among other things adding a Century 360 Horizontal Situation Indictor (a major factor when I bought the airplane).
The Le Tourneau folks kept the most complete logs I’ve ever seen, which I may have misread—the fact that someplace logs everything they do to an airplane doesn’t mean they do everything it needs.
In the 1990s, LeTourneau sold N16460, and it changed hands several times. Eventually a retired fire chief traded it in on a twin at a dealership in Texas. I found it there two years ago, and made a big mistake. Rather than paying round-trip airfare to fly my regular mechanic to Texas, I paid a local maintenance shop—next door to the dealer—to do an annual inspection. I am not going to name the mechanic.
It’s too late for any legal remedy, and he did find some things—about $2,500 worth, including a mixture cable that was binding and engine hoses “as old as the airplane.” I made a deal with the dealer—I bought the parts and he paid the mechanic.
Then I bought one-way tickets for myself and a flight instructor, and finished getting the 10 hours of dual in type that my insurance required while flying the airplane home to California.
At that point, I knew the airplane needed work—the interior was rough, there was water damage on the instrument panel, and the paint’s a bit old—but I had no idea how much.
Our first big problem the automatic gear extension system, which didn’t work properly—annoying, because that’s a big part of why I bought an Arrow in the first place. With just under 1000 hours of fixed-gear time and some dual in retractables, I was ready to move up, but my wife was a new pilot and deathly afraid of a gear-up landing. The automatic gear extension was a big selling point for both of us. Oh well, she would be flying dual for quite awhile and it would be good practice for me to do extra GUMP checks.
We flew it with the override permanently on and figured we’d fix it at annual. Oil consumption seemed high (and got worse), and then we had a landing gear problem. As I’ve already said, the Arrow’s gear has no up-locks, all that holds it up is hydraulic pressure. When the seals in the hydraulic system start to go bad, they won’t hold pressure—and the gear starts to come down. Switches detect this, start the pump, and the gear comes up. The pump shuts off, the pressure drops, and the whole thing starts again…
From the pilot’s point of view, this produces some weird symptoms: I noticed the instrument panel lights oscillating between dim and bright and the ammeter going up and down… while over water, on a flight from Catalina Island to Ventura. I wound up making an immediate turn to land and getting permission from SoCal approach for a precautionary landing at Van Nuys.
That’s when we found out that the hydraulic hoses were also as old as the airplane. I could go on, but by now you’re probably beginning to get the picture. In less than two years, I’ve spent over $10,000 on maintenance—none of which shows. N16460 is now a much better airplane than what I bought, with (among other things) two new cylinders, a completely refurbished vacuum system and gyros, and a ton of new parts… None of which makes it any prettier (it still needs interior work) or faster (I flight plan 135 knots).
If you’re buying an Arrow—or any other airplane that’s been used as a trainer—plan to spend extra money on the first year’s maintenance. And you’ll be better off if you pay someone you trust to do a really thorough inspection before you give the seller a dime. Looking back on it, the price of a round-trip ticket for my mechanic would have been chump change against the money I’ve sunk into this airplane. With all that said, though, I still think an Arrow was a good choice for my first complex airplane. It’s been expensive, but never dangerous, and that’s a good deal!
John D. Ruley is an instrument-rated private pilot with over 1000 hours PIC time—almost all in Cherokees and Arrows. He’s a freelance writer specializing in science and technology, a volunteer pilot for LIGA International (www.ligainternational.org), and past president of the Modesto Airport Pilot’s Association. You can write to John at jruley@ainet.com.
