Piper PA-28R Arrow Checklist

What the Piper PA-28R Arrow is

The Piper PA-28R Arrow is the retractable-gear, constant-speed-prop member of the Cherokee family — the airplane a lot of pilots earn their complex and commercial time in. It takes the familiar low-wing PA-28 airframe, adds hydraulic retractable tricycle gear and a controllable-pitch propeller, and turns it into a genuine complex trainer and a capable cross-country single. The family runs across several generations: the original 180 hp Arrow (PA-28R-180), the 200 hp Arrow II (PA-28R-200), the tapered-wing Arrow III (PA-28R-201) that this template centers on, and the T-tail Arrow IV, plus turbocharged Turbo Arrow variants. This card is built around the normally aspirated Arrow III with the fuel-injected Lycoming IO-360 — the most common variant in flight schools and private hangars, and the one with the largest body of public training material. Because the engine is fuel-injected there is no carb-heat item, and because the gear retracts, the gear-down three-green check is repeated as a killer item at before-taxi, run-up, before-landing, and short final. Who flies it: commercial and complex students building retractable time, CFIs teaching the complex endorsement, time-builders, and owners who want more speed and useful load than a fixed-gear Cherokee. Pilots stepping up from an Archer or a 172 meet three new habits at once — a prop control, a gear handle they must never forget, and on many airframes an Automatic Gear Extension system that can lower the gear on its own.

The Arrow is where a lot of us first learned that an airplane can bite you just for forgetting one lever. I built this card around the normally aspirated Arrow III because that is the one most people rent for their complex time, and I put the gear-down, three-green check at every point in the pattern where a real pilot has landed one wheels-up. Print it, add your tail number, and fly the numbers in your own POH, not mine.

Normal procedures

The normal flow runs preflight and walkaround, before-start, engine start, taxi, run-up and before-takeoff, takeoff and initial climb, climb, cruise, descent, before-landing, after-landing, and shutdown and securing, with an Arrow III V-speed table. The defining habit is the gear: the gear-down, three-green check is repeated at before-taxi, run-up, before-landing, and again on short final, because a forgotten gear handle is the classic way pilots damage an Arrow. Add a constant-speed prop lever and the fuel-injected start technique, and you have the three new things that catch pilots stepping up from an Archer or a 172. There is no carb-heat line because the IO-360 is fuel-injected.

Emergency procedures

The emergency and abnormal section is deliberately conservative, with the reflex memory items in bold. It covers engine failure on the takeoff roll, engine failure after takeoff at low altitude, engine failure in flight with a restart attempt, engine fire, electrical fire / smoke in the cockpit, an alternator/electrical abnormal, and a landing-gear-malfunction flow for a gear that will not confirm down-and-locked. Two things are deliberately left open: the engine-failure-after-takeoff flow leaves out any turn-back to the runway, because that decision altitude is airport-, aircraft-, and training-specific and needs explicit CFI sign-off; and the Automatic Gear Extension override behavior is flagged rather than assumed, because fitment varies by serial. This is a training aid built from POH-derived steps, not the AFM — verify every flow against your aircraft’s approved POH with a CFI.

Verify it against your POH

The research behind this template flagged several things that genuinely vary by variant, serial, and operator. Check these against your aircraft’s approved POH/AFM before you rely on the card:

• Automatic Gear Extension (AGE) presence and behavior. Many Arrows through the III have a factory AGE system that can extend the gear on its own at low airspeed/power, with a floor-mounted override and an amber advisory light — but not all do, and Piper changed fitment across production. Confirm whether your exact serial has it and how it behaves before trusting any override step.
• Rotation speed (Vr) as a single number. Sources gave a range (roughly 60–72 KIAS) depending on flap setting and gear position; no single canonical Vr held across configurations. Pull the figure for the exact config you fly from the POH.
• Electrical-fire / smoke vent guidance. Sources conflict across POH generations on whether to close vents (starve the fire) or ventilate (clear smoke). The card says “per POH” on purpose — settle it against your specific POH page.
• Fuel selector position at shutdown. Left on the fuller tank versus turned off appears to be an operator/school policy question rather than a single POH-mandated answer. Confirm your operator’s procedure.
• Run-up RPM and magneto drop limits. These numeric values were not pulled from a verified official POH excerpt in the research pass — source the exact figures from your aircraft’s POH before flying them as fixed numbers.
• Cowl flap presence and operation. Adjustable cowl flaps vary by production year; some Arrow IIIs may not have them. Confirm for your serial before treating the cowl-flap items as standard.
• Whether a turn-back to the runway belongs at all. The engine-failure-after-takeoff flow deliberately leaves it out; turn-back decision altitude is airport/aircraft/training-specific and needs explicit CFI sign-off if you add it.
• Short/soft-field technique. No verified short/soft-field procedure was included — source those separately for your model if you need them.
• V-speeds and variant deltas. The table is Arrow III-representative; the earlier Hershey-bar Arrow and Arrow II have different wings, tankage, and speeds that do not transfer.