Airline Pilot Central Forums - View Single Post - Not understanding AoA indicators...

11-13-2014, 02:33 PM

#13

Adlerdriver

Gets Weekends Off

Joined APC: Jul 2007

Position: 767 Captain

Posts: 3,988

Quote:

Originally Posted by USMCFLYR

Absolutely - but what if you could cover up all those instruments like you are suggesting and then look at ONE instrument that would give you (for instance) best range, best endurance, best climb, best descent, best landing (full or half or NO flaps) and if you did lose control - best recovery - under all conditions?

+1 to this.

Learning to fly high performance jets that spent a great deal of time in various stages of pre-stall buffet, AOA information was extremely helpful. Instructors would describe areas to avoid (like “heavy buffet”) as “elephants (or something else big) jumping on the wings”. An energy saving turn was a “light tickle”. Max acceleration to get knots was “light in the seat” or floating your feet off the rudder pedals.

The problem was, all those descriptions were subjective. One guy’s elephants weren’t the same as another’s. Having an AOA gauge to correlate what was really happening to what I was actually feeling made it so much easier to eventually, with some experience, fly the aircraft into those regimes accurately simply by feel.

Translating that to a new student in a light airplane – I think an AOA gauge would be extremely helpful. For starters, what a great independent backup in the event of a pitot-static problem. Also, they could learn more about how the aircraft performs closer to the edges of the envelope. Not that you want a student flying on the edge right away, but to make him fly in the middle all the time doesn’t allow him to gain full knowledge of the aircraft and its limits. There is still approach to stall and stall recovery training for a PPL, right? Most analog airplanes talk to you as you approach various AOA milestones. Being able to recognize those just by feel has always been an important thing to learn – an AOA gauge just makes that easier, IMO.

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