  Some active stars show a so-called flip-flop phenomenon in which the main
spot activity periodically switches between two active longitudes that are 180
degrees apart. In this paper we study the flip-flop phenomenon by converting
results from dynamo calculations into long-term synthetic photometric
observations, which are then compared to the real stellar observations. We show
that similar activity patterns as obtained from flip-flop dynamo calculations,
can also be seen in the observations. The long-term light-curve behaviour seen
in the synthesised data can be used for finding new stars exhibiting the
flip-flop phenomenon.
