Conventional vs. T Tail, pros, cons?

[Baron2PG]

Owned a PA32RT-300T (T-Tail Turbocharged Piper Lance) for years (~900 hours). Flying the T-Tail was a non-issue; don't believe any of the negative hype about the "tail dropping"; complete BS.

The T-Tail is AWESOME on the ground. No tail to smack into when your working around the plane, loading passengers, dorking around in the T-hangar.

If all things are equal I'd take the T-Tail personally.

How about a T-Tail Cessna!

 

[tonycondon]

Some T-tailed airliners, seems to me, had deep-stall issues. The tail would get blanketed by the wing's wash at high AoAs and prevent stall recovery. How's that for being in style?

Dan

 

[kyleb]

I'm trying to figure out how the tail could be stalled and then magically unstalled when its angle of attack never changed? (Let's assume for this thought exercise that the pilot simply held the yoke in the full aft position.)

Authority change, most definitely - I'm not a fan of the T-Tailed Pipers, though the DA40 doesn't seem to have the bad habits that the Pipers do. But I don't think it's a tail-stalled-to-unstalled issue on takeoff, because the tail has to have some authority before its AoA can change.

You may be right.

On the other hand, a stalled wing (or tail) still generates lift, just at a much lower CL than an unstalled surface. So a stalled tail may have enough authority to drive the tail down (and the nose up) enough so the tail unstalls and kicks in mucho downforce.

I promise, at least on the Tomahawk, the transition from not much elevator authority to a LOT of elevator authority is amazingly fast the first time you discover it.