Wizofox
>No they're not. The drag/power curve is how much power you need to maintain LEVEL flight. If you have excess power over and above that, you can climb, or fly LEVEL at a faster speed. If you ONLY have enough power to fly level at the bottom of the curve, you CAN'T maintain level flight at any other speed.<
Where have I said that if you trying to climb at blue line on one engine have all the power available can you suddenly find more power to increase that speed.
You minimalise the importance of kinetic energy as part of your total energy management or somehow underate the ability to tap in and out of that.
I am sure you know of Bob Hoover. His party trick was to shut down both engines on his twin engined Shrike Commander dive the aircraft using totally kinetic energy find enough energy to pull the twin not only vertical but to do a complete loop and land off that loop engine out.
A glider the most basic form of aircraft with NO engines on a still calm day totally relies on kinetic energy for speed control and hence flight. I am sure you too have seen gliders towed to 3000 feet and released. I have seen aerobatic displays where the glider will run through a full range of aerobatics with no engine other than the Kinetic energy.
Your statement that reducing the angle of attack will have you going all the way down to the ground is far from the truth.
Speed does effect lift at a given angle of attack reduce that angle of attack and you reduce drag hence why in the seneca it will happily fly for hours at 127 kts level but will not do so with the same power at blue line. The reason for that is the aircraft is attempting to climb has no kinetic energy on tap and has a higher angle of attack than it would do at a faster speed in level flight.
These graphs are designed to show an incomplete picture and directed at single engine climb.
As you know the slower you go the more control inputs are required for a given effect, slow too much and you will have full rudder and not enough rudder to control the yaw and hence a stall, spin, scenario The same goes for all your other control surfaces.
Infact with the Seneca a slow speed pitching 7 degrees requires 8 inches of movement on the column try the same pitch at gently at cruise without breaking the plane and the column moves 2 cms.
Take the glider which has only one powerplant (kinetic energy) try and maintain level flight and the speed drops away. The AOA increases to maintain that altitude and continues to do so as speed bleeds off until the inevitable stall. Push the nose over and you tap back into kinetic energy and hey presto you are flying again.
It is this obsession with a climb and blue line which is the killer. The margins in that part of the envelope are so small especially where there is relatively so little power.
Trade some of that altitude (not a lot) for speed and and level flight and you are in a much more secure situation in some circumstances.
And no most of my flying nowadays is in business jets as a Captain but I still fly light twins and am not some sort of idiot like you like to make me out to be.
Pace