I've heard differing accounts, and I'm going to largely refrain from judgment. However, if you vie to be the first man on the moon on a publicly funded mission, you can expect to have some notoriety afterward. Smiling and being pleasant is not that hard. If he wanted a "quiet life" he could have let somebody else be first, or maybe pay back the few billion spent to take him there. Refusing to sign autographs for kids or do a few charity events, even if some wind up on ebay, is pretty lame IMO.

Not saying the public "owns" him, but he should expect notoriety and be pleasant about it. Many people I know say he was just a cold a-hole if you weren't viewed as important to him or just wanted to shake his hand or get a signature. Big contrast to Buzz and Collins.

I guess I'm surprised that a real "professional aviator" would think it would be an amazing feat to land and secure a high-lift plane with a 45 kt stall speed on a 1000 foot patch, even if it is going up and down several feet at a time. Flying is more difficult for some than others. If this is "super-baaaad Chuck Norris" skills, then guilty as charged. Good luck to you!

That is in line with a great deal of anecdotes I've heard too.

 

Returning to AOA information. More from Dick Collins from Flying/AOPA a few days ago in "Air Facts":

And restating my comments from a few weeks ago.

 

Another entrant into the AoA market place.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...t=email#224900

 

I don't think having an AOA gauge would allow you to "push the envelope." It merely shows you what the wing is doing. I don't think having a guage that will accurately indicate L/D max, minimum controllable airspeed, and an exact approach speed at any weight, configuration, or G-load is risky.

 

Never used an AoA indicator. Would like to have one installed just to watch & see what it does. Pitch Limit Indicators, sure appreciate having those.

 

Pitch is not the same as AoA (except on TO roll).

 

Lots of assumptions in play there. However, if you're going to say that, then wouldn't you have to include level flight as well?

Either one of those assumes the wing has an angle of incidence of zero in relation to the longitudinal axis (pitch reference) of the aircraft.

If the wing was mounted on the fuselage with a positive 2 degree angle of incidence, when it rotated to 5 degrees of pitch on takeoff roll, AOA would be 7.

 

Assuming all those 7's denote Boeing? You well know contact with the PLI activates the shaker. Obviously the pitch attitude where this occurs is lower in a turn or with the speed brakes extended for any given weight or configuration. If & when that awful moment ever comes, as you're looking through F/D commands in recovery, nice having those golden feathers for reference wouldn't you agree?

 

All true, yes assuming zero angle of incidence since that's not a variable on a given airplane (OK there were I think some carrier-based airplanes that could actually adjust that).

The TO roll is the only time you know for certain that pitch = AoA (or AoA - AoI if applicable). In flight you can make some reasonable assumptions in certain phases, but those AF447 guys obviously had a huge delta between what they thought pitch was telling them about AoA, and what AoA was really doing.

 

Minor correction - The two AOA probes on the side of the jet (at least on 777) activate the stick shaker. PLI is simply a computer generated reference on the PFD that shows the pitch at which shaker will occur.