Folks – please don’t assume that because you can “recover” from a fully developed stall in a simulator, that you’ll be able to do the same thing in the airplane. Taking a simulator into a fully developed stall, either for pilot experience or testing of the simulator, rapidly approaches being an exercise in irrelevance. Simulators are wonderfully good training, testing, and checking tools that, when used correctly, will allow a pilot to develop a set of skills that he/she will be able to use in the airplane without modification. But this wonderful tool is merely that, a tool. And, as most tools, it has limitations. The aerodynamic program used in modern simulators is modified with data that is collected during flight-testing of the airplane. For the curious, look at the requirements for the necessary flight tests for airplane certification. You will see that the maximum parameters are something like 25 – 28 degrees positive pitch (maybe as high as 30), 10 – 15 degrees negative pitch (maybe as low as 20), 45 – 50 degrees of bank (maybe up to 60), and very, very small amounts of sideslip – maybe up to 5 degrees – and that is with almost zero angle of attack. With this programming, the simulator will perform and handle (assuming its been programmed and tested correctly) very closely to that of the aircraft. However, take that simulator outside of those parameters, and all bets are off. No one, not even the airplane manufacturer’s engineering folks, are in a position to know, or guess, as to what the airplane will do.
The things I’ve read in this string are mostly correct – and I certainly agree with the statements that “playing around with stalls is not for the amateur pilot.” Well, in a transport category airplane, this activity isn’t for the very experienced pilot either, unless that pilot is specifically trained for and is specifically intending to do very specific things; is specifically prepared to do such things in the airplane; has the monitoring, and even emergency safety equipment installed and checked; etc. I also agree with those here who have cautioned against the cavalier use of the rudder. Nothing wrong with keeping the airplane in coordinated flight – but using the rudder to do something else – particularly something the rudder wasn’t intended to do – is probably foolhardy. Remember, airplanes are generally fool proof – but very few are idiot proof.
AirRabbit