Originally Posted by
Machinbird
...
My personal experience with the USNavy peg, cone and vane type AOA sensors is that they would come alive in a definite breeze, perhaps 10 knots. A vane type that needed 60 knots to be reliable would be a sticky one in my book.
For lots of detail on the AoA vanes see the Perpignan crash report. The vane may indeed generate a "local angle of attack" but "As the fuselage disturbs the flow of air, these measurements
have to be corrected to obtain the aeroplane angle of attack." I wonder if its the compensations that limit the use at lower speed, but then where does the speed come from?