I've heard (and read) that the PA-28 series has a laminar flow wing:
The Piper had a very thick airfoil that used laminar flow to assure that lift would be lost very slowly up to the stall.
People seem to pitch the Cherokee's wing as some sort of amazing safety and performance improvement. I've always understood that laminar flow wings had an abrupt, harsh stall, but offered reduced drag in cruise. I have a ton of early-Cherokee time on the 'Hershey Bar' wing, and its stall behavior is gentle and predictable, while its cruise speed is almost knot-for-knot on par with a Cessna 172 of comparable power.
Is the PA-28 laminar flow wing just a marketing gimmick? If one were to put a Cherokee wing in a wind tunnel, would we see laminar flow?
