AoA, stall and philosophy
1) Whew! Glad some folks corrected/confirmed my geometry concerning flight path and AoA.
Every airplane since the one I checked out in back in early 1904 ( Wilbur was my IP), has depended upon the shape of the wing and the AoA ( relative wind over the wing) to get airborne and stay there.
Why is AoA not a basis for all thoughts here concerning the ability of an airplane to fly?
2) I initially homed in on a classic, uncontrollable "deep stall" scenario due to my experience in the Viper. After seeing many charts and graphs and verbiage concerning the 'bus, I backed off.
Then I learned about the actual flight path of the jet and some limited tidbits concerning pilot inputs. I do not think the jet was in an unrecoverable stall. It was simply stalled!
Unlike our little jet, which could find its way to a true deep stall that was beyond human or aerodynamic capacity to overcome, the 'bus does not seem capable of "getting there". It has to be "held" there - by the pilot, the basic control law implementation, or a combination.
The role of the THS in this accident will become a major finding. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
How did the THS get to max "up" position? Well, the jet has a gee command for pitch, not attitude or AoA. So if I hold a gee command greater than 1 gee, the THS moves to allow the elevators to behave "normally". Pull back, go up. Push forward, go down. Pull back a lot, go down quickly.
Somehow the THS remained in the max position for a nose up command. Cause is to be determined.
3) Philosophy.
The FBW systems and many other schemes are designed to a) protect the plane or b) protect the "cargo".
In my case, the design philosophy was not to protect the plane!! We could have had a plane with a 15 gee capability, an effective AoA of 60 degrees, etc. But what we got was a plane that would roll and pitch and turn at a very effective limit that no other plane of its time could equal. We could pull as hard as we could, but the jet would only reach the AoA and gee limits. We could command max roll at any condition and the "system" would limit that command in order to keep the pointy end forward. So we had a system that protected the pilot from doing stupid things, but perform better than any adversary we'd be likely to face.
I see a combination of protection with the 'bus. It tries to protect the plane from over-gee, max speed, max roll angle, max pitch attitude, etc. It also protects the pilot from demanding more of the plane than it is capable of delivering - to a point.
So we now come to unique conditions at FL350 and pilot inputs that meet conflicting "laws", and the "laws" themselves.
So is the problem training, airmanship, inappropriate control laws for "abnormal" sensor data, ad infinitum?. And the beat goes on.......
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I am disappointed about the lack of understanding here concerning AoA and stall characteristics. Stall recovery and recognition of stalls are paramount capabilities all pilots must master.