Perhaps I have missed it somewhere, but how can you lock the flaps in various positions without having them automatically retract once you reach a certain speed
You can't "lock down" the flaps to prevent them from auto-retracting once you reach certain speeds. There are only two ways to prevent the flaps from auto-retracting, 1) don't use flaps and 2) watch your speed to avoid the flaps from auto-retracting.
....Can someone also explain to me the reason AH has this auto-flap retract feature?....If you forget to raise the flaps, and your speed damages them, that should be your problem....Much like the landing gear...They don`t auto-retract.....
It's purely a game play decision on the part of HiTech and we will never see it removed from the game.
As a player that purely flies a plane that is flap dependent, it sucks having such a hand holding feature like auto-retracting flaps, especially after playing the other two major sims that didn't have this feature. However, I can see the reasoning behind it and have learned to live with it that it really is no longer an issue with me as I was already used to keeping my speed under control to avoid over speeding and damaging my flaps from playing AW and WB.
The only thing you have to be careful of is in nose low turns with flaps deployed as it's easy to over speed and have the flaps auto-retract while in a turn which has a tendency to cause a very nasty spin that can be very, very difficult to recover from.
ack-ack