@ Doze
J
ust to clarify - the computer does make use of AoA, otherwise alpha protections wouldn't work. Those protections are *inhibited* in Alternate Law because the systems are not designed to work from a single data value (in this case AoA).
Even in Normal Law however, the flight computers cannot *command* the aircraft to change attitude without input from a human pilot or the autopilot (which is a separate and distinct system from the flight computers). Alpha Protection simply maintains pitch attitude slightly below alpha max for the current airspeed. The only positive command that comes out of the protections is when Alpha Floor orders TOGA - and again, autothrust needs to be functional to do this.
Fer chrissakes,
Doze, the system did not limit the AoA or we wouldn't be here trying to figure out what happened.
I must admit that our primitive FBW system didn't care about attitude - it limited AoA and gee with no regard for aircraft attitude. Different requirements and missions.
We could pull power back in level flight and let the system "trim" up command ( AoA, not pitch). In other words, trimmed for one gee and let HAL do his thing. When we got to 27 deg AoA we were at 1 gee max command and actual parameters. Sucker would then slowly begin to descend at 27 degrees AoA. If we had not entered the deep stall bucket with bad pitch moment, then we could simply push forward on the sidestick and fly out.
On one of our engine failures, the guy ejected and the jet got to the AoA limit and slowly descended until it hit the ground. St and level, as no sidestick roll command and HAL kept roll rate at zero.
One jet actually landed by itself and only suffered a broken main gear. The guilty pilot ( ran outta gas and tried for a deadstick landing until about 300 feet) looked back after landing in the chute and the jet was there with the strobe flashing and the EPU still pumping out poisonous gas, heh heh. They used the jet for maintenance training afterwards.
Our gee command was manually controlled by using our trim switch. So default was 1 gee, but we could trim to 3.5 positive gee or about 2 negative gees.
The 'bus system doesn't work the way ours did and still does.
So I would recommend that once outta primary law that the system uses something like we had.