Originally Posted by Chesty Morgan
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I've always thought a wing would stall at the same angle of attack (give or take) regardless of flap.
An airfoil will always stall at the same AoA. That does not mean
any airfoil; different airfoils will stall at different AoA. Adding flaps alters the chord, camber and size of the wing; it may alter the flow over the wing (as in slots energizing the boundary layer etc), and will definitely change the critical AoA.
Reference any decent principles of flight book; it will have graphs of CL plotted for different AOAs in different configurations. Without having access to any at the moment; I believe the general tendency for extending flaps is moving the graph up and to the left; ie increasing CL for any given AOA, but dereasing AOAcrit. Adding slots, either by slats or slottet flaps, will extend the graph up and to the right; ie not provide any significant increase in CL for a given AoA, but increase the AoAcrit. These two used together, as in a flap+slat combo or even a decent fowler flap, will increase CL, and may increase or decrease AoAcrit.
But don't shoot me if I got it wrong either. 11 months ago I had never even touched a yoke; now I'm a CFI, so there might be some gaps here and there
