first of all...
@ rouli The Viper limiters were inviolable - very hard. The only way to manually control the horizontal tails was with the pitch override switch, and that thing did not work unless AoA was above 30 degrees In other words, we could use it to "rock" outta the "deep stall". I had some excerpts from the Code One article on that in a very early thread here when we were discussing the possibility that the AF jet had an aft cee gee and the same problem as the Viper at extreme AoA's.
@ EMIT TNX for the nice words. I knew about the Belgian, as it was a few months previous. The thing about getting slow or even close to a normal AoA was you lost roll authority. I commented on this during my approach, and 170 knots was prolly too slow, and I should have stayed at 180 or so. The engineers told me that I had approximately one pound to play with out of the 17 pounds required for max roll command. Another factor was that the yaw trim reversed as you slowed down below "x" AoA. So it was a good thing I simply drove the sucker onto the concrete with no flare or attempt to soften the touchdown. That technique became the procedure after another incident or two.
@ Doze Yeah I know the three modes, but feel that the "alternate" should be more basic and eliminate the THS auto-trim feature. old ground, I know and we had a good discussion on the pro's and con's two years ago.