WHAT AIRPLANE IS THIS?

The Piper Cherokee Arrow

The Piper Aircraft Corporation got its start when William Piper bought the Taylor Brothers Aircraft company in 1930. Piper had been one of the founding backers of the Taylors’ company. But The Great Depression took away most of the company’s income and forced the sale. This is why so many of the early Piper designs resembled Taylorcrafts.

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Piper placed its hopes on a frail looking, high wing monoplane called the J3 Cub. This designed proved successful as everyone knows. The “Grasshopper”, as the army called the Cub, served well throughout the war and made Piper airplanes even more famous (photo 1). Other high-wing designs, such as the Vagabond, Pacer and Tri-Pacer (photo 2), followed after the war.

All of Piper’s single engine aircraft designs were high-wing types. Piper seemed to be designing the same type of aircraft as was its rival, Cessna. But then Piper took over the Stinson Aircraft Company in 1948. Stinson had designed a great light, twin-engined airplane called, not unexpectedly, the Twin Stinson. In 1952 this design became, with some modifications, the PA-23 Apache and Piper started their experience producing low-wing designs.

For more than 4 years, Piper’s aircraft were either slow, high-wing designs like the Tri-Pacer or complex, advanced twins like the Apache. There was a performance gap between the two and this was hurting Piper’s sales. Always a good businessman, William Piper would not long allow this to continue. In 1956, Piper introduced an advanced low-wing, single-engine aircraft called the Comanche.

The Comanche featured an all flying tail, called a stabilator, and was powered by a 180 hp. Lycoming engine. The Comanche seated four passengers and had retractable landing gear. Several Comanche versions quickly followed. A 250 hp. engine became standard and an eight-cylinder, 400 hp. engine could be had that made the Comanche the fastest single-engine light airplane in the world.

Piper even stretched the Comanche to hold six passengers. Record flights were made all over the world such as Max Conrad’s non-stop flight from Casablanca to Los Angles. But, as successful as was the Comanche, it was still a big, powerful airplane and was more expensive than the smaller Cessnas like the C-150 and C-172. Actually, the Comanche line was more similar to the C-182/206 versions from a marketing standpoint.



Mr. P still had a product gap to fill. This product gap was filled on January 14, 1960 when the first Piper PA-28 Cherokee lifted off from Vero Beach, Florida. The Cherokee’s designer was Fred Weick who designed the Ercoupe.

The Cherokee was a very simple aircraft. With a swept vertical fin, a large, very square, non-tapering wing and just four seats, the Cherokee was the C-172’s direct competitor. Like the C-172, the Cherokee wing provided lift in huge amounts but did cut top speed a bit. The nearly constant-chord wing, the chord is the distance from the leading to trailing edges, appeared so square that it quickly earned the title of “Hershey Bar” wing. For those too young to remember, this rectangular chocolate bar appeared considerably larger in the early 1960’s than it does now, and cost only 5 cents. It also closely resembled the new Cherokee’s wing.

The Cherokee was an instant success and had some options the C-172 did not. It could be had in either 150, 160 or 180 hp versions for example. A more powerful version, called the Cherokee 235, was powered by the 235 hp Lycoming O-540 engine and could carry almost 1,500 lb. of fuel, people and baggage.

This is an achievement since the aircraft’s empty weight was less than the load it could carry.

A less powerful trainer, the Cherokee 140, having just two seats (must have been a lot of baggage room in the cabin) was offered in 1963 to compete with the C-150. The Cherokee Six, the six-passenger version, also flew in 1963. Eventually, the Cherokee filled all possible roles available to a small, single-engined airplane except that of a light retractable, economical airplane.

This last version had only to wait until June, 1967 when the new, retractable Cherokee, called the Arrow, flew for the first time. The Arrow was powered by a 200 hp, four-cylinder engine that burned only 10 gallons of fuel per hour while speeding the airplane along at speeds approaching 150 mph. To say the Arrow proved popular would be more than a gross understatement.

The Arrow had a unique for its time feature. The retracted landing gear would automatically drop if the pilot reduced airspeed below 110 mph while the engine was producing less than 25% power. This was a safety feature intended to prevent those noisy gear-up landings. Unfortunately, the airplane did not know if it was within 10 or 10,000 feet of the ground and dropped the gear during stall and glide practice sessions as well. True engine-out glide incidents were made more difficult as the airplane’s best glide speed was lower than the auto gear extension airspeed. No pilot wants the gear down when trying to reach a safe field during an emergency.

For these instances, an auto extension override switch was located in the cockpit. Many pilots simply locked this switch in the “on” position all the time. This ended unwanted gear extensions but also promoted noisy, no-wheel landings.

While the 200 hp Lycoming was the most popular, a turbo-supercharged Continental engine was offered in 1978. Product liability lawsuits had yet to destroy the American light-plane market and Piper sold more than 1,000 Cherokees each year. There were a confusing array of Cherokees like the Cruiser, Pathfinder, Charger and Flite Liner differing only in equipment and power plants. The airframe, except for the stretched “Six” version, was the same.

The Cherokee design went on to become the Lance when retractable landing gear was added to the “Six”. Removing the front engine and installing an engine on each wing led to the design of the Seneca light-twin which shared many airframe components with the Cherokee Six.



The Cherokee Arrow got a new, tapered wing in 1975. The new wing had a semi-taper plan-form for more speed without sacrificing too much lift. With few modifications, this aircraft is still produced by the New Piper Aircraft Company and is still called the Arrow (photo 4). Of course, the price is considerably higher than it was in 1967 but the airplane has far more creature comforts and piloting aides like the new all-glass instrument panel.

As for the clues:
“The Piper Arrow was based on the standard Cherokee airframe but was the first Cherokee with retractable landing gear in its "Hershey Bar" wing. It also had a 200 hp engine.” – The contest photo airplane clearly has retractable landing gear. It also looks like nothing else than a Piper Cherokee.

“The Mooney Chaparral's vertical fin had a straight leading edge and a trailing edge (rudder trailing edge) that swept forward as do most Mooneys. – The contest aircraft’s vertical fin has leading and trailing edges that sweep rearward.

"The PA-32 Cherokee Six had an extended fuselage and did not have retractable landing gear. – If the landing gear was fixed in position, then the Cherokee Six could not be the contest airplane.

"The PA-32-300S was a production float-equipped airplane based on the Cherokee Six land version. – The contest airplane could land on the water as well as on a runway. But it would only be able to land on the water ONCE. Since there were no floats on it, the airplane would quickly sink

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