Originally Posted by
VicMel
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Whatever damping there may be in the AoA sensor it has to be fairly light otherwise there would be a significant delay on the AoA signal and obviously the pilot does not want to be told he is approaching a stall condition after he has got there! More seriously, if the counterweight without a vane can really get from 35.7 deg to 74.5 deg in 0.75 of a second, then there is very little damping. I do not think it is feasible that the counterweight can then stop, nearly instantaneously, onto the 74.5 deg position, without any overshoot at all, or bouncing off of any end stop that is set at 74.5 deg. Naah, you need software to do that sort of screw up.
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Secondly, good point, I’ve no idea why the L AoA Heat changed state. I’m puzzled as to why the state was On at the beginning, when the outside temperature was 16deg C. However, I’m more inclined to believe that it was spurious than I am to believe there was anything other than a single underlying failure which affected all 3 of the flights.
Vic
The damping is set for significantly higher forces than the weight itself which is just to counterbalance the vane.
The end stop could well be a 'soft' stop where things get wedged, the ticks downward from ~.5g spikes suggest just that.
If you compare the reported left AoA position to vertical g at the end it is a close to perfect match.
The AoA vane heat is likely on by default, it does get a bit colder at higher altitudes. Also there was a reason it was included in the prelim report, another 1000+ (I may be off here) parameters were not.