Originally Posted by FlyingForFun
1972,
I can not disagree with your post, but I don't think it's very helpful. People (including students) fly different aircraft at different weights all the time, so learning a particular stick position at which the stall occurs (and bearing in mind it will also change with flap settings due to the different AoA required, and, I think, power settings due to the effect of the power on the elevator) is not helpful. The only reason I cn think of why it is helpful for a PPL student to know that the stick position is important in determining when the stall occurs is because, as you rightly say, some forward movement of the stick (assuming it's not an inverted stall) is required on the recovery. But the aim of the exercise we teach PPLs is to recover with minimum height loss - and to achieve minimum height loss, more is required than simply moving the stick forward.
FFF
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POWER SETTINGS WILL NOT CHANGE THE STICK POSITION REQUIRED TO GENERATE A STALL.
The reason why I'm banging on like this is that I agree will all the comment about it being preferable not to get into a stall in the first place. And if you know the stick position where this occurs, you can avoid this. Most students and many PPL's flying, say, a 152, two-up, don't know this. And I think there was a case of a DC-10 in South America a few years ago, which deep stalled into the ground from 20,000 feet with the power full on and the column fully aft, past the stall stick position As I said, when it comes to recovery, you need power in to give you the speed to prevent or recover your height loss. But it's stick position, not power settings, that caused the stall in the first place.
I can't comment on how this applies to a fly-by-wire aircraft such as the F-16 or the Airbus. But this applies for GA aircraft, certainly.
Have a read of this article in the CASA Flight Safety Magazine from 2000:
http://www.casa.gov.au/fsa/2000/sep/FSA34-35.pdf