Wiz, you said "Most Aircraft that actually measure AOA do so with a vane attached to the fuselage, so what they are measuring is entirely independant of the wing."
True, I think it "measures" aoa, but does the pilot see this ever? What may be presented to the pilot is not aoa, for example if one uses the common teledyne (sp?) system. The aoa probe provides info to the system, what the pilot sees is the indicator on the gauge, which would generally show buffet area above .8, with the true stall supposedly at 1.0
This was irrespective of configuration. The "stall" (ie 1.0 on the gauge) was the same for clean, slats, and slats+flaps. despite the aircraft being at a different pitch angle, and different aoa.
And so I think there was an input to the gauge so that it would know the configuration, and make the correct adjustment.
I haven't used other systems to know if they actually show aoa, and not percent of stall