Quote: Clandestino
Well... no. Aerodynamically it is stable yet with FBW intervention in ALT2 law, where low and high speed stability are lost (as is expected when there is no reliable speed measurement), it does not become neutral but unstable.
Quote: Gums
Wrong. Aero is aero, and the FBW system can only do so much. I do not believe that the jet becomes unstable, only that there is an AoA and cee gee combo that enables it to reach a stable, stalled condition that we did not realize was possible.
All the data I have seen shows that the 'bus does not have an AoA/cee gee combination that makes the jet unstable. The intervention by FBW laws, limits, protections can only do so much. In my case, we were actually unstable until about 0.95M. So HAL took care of us, but enabled fabulous pitch rates, sustained turn rates, sustained gee and such that had never been seen.
Well, iīm not sure what you both are getting there, therefore i try to summarize the issue about stability in my own understanding (feel free to correct).
The airframe itself is, no, must be natural positive stable, otherwise it would not be flyable in direct law.
In Nz-Law, which applies in all Laws except Direct Law Ground Law and Flare Law (did i forget one?) the flight control system creates an artificial neutral stability by use of elevators and THS trim, leading to a stable flightpath without SS input. Not the SS drives the elevators, but the flight control system using present flightpath and the demanded change from that flightpath.
Protections are there to keep this flight path stable airframe within the flight envelope, in simple terms to deviate from this ordered stable flightpath when set parameters are exceeded. There are other tasks to be fullfilled by those protections as well, but not of relevance what i try to get at.
When those protections are degraded or lost, we still have an airframe with artificial neutral stability, as the flightcontrol system still works along the demands of Nz Law, but the protections to keep the aircraft within the flight envelope are gone and have to be replaced by the skill of the crew.
In the case discussed here once on the way up to the apogee the Flight Control System was trying to maintain the flightpath with elevator deflection and THS trim blind to the fact (protections lost) that it would run out of airspeed in doing so, will finally stall, as it did. The crew, who should have compensated for those lost protections was most probably unaware of that fact too, otherwise they wouldnīt have continued to apply NU SS. This NU SS had not much influence after the stall happened, as the flight control system was beyond itīs capability to maintain the flightpath (descending already instead of continueing on the ordered climbing trajectory). The SS movement between NU and Level had no effect and showed no reaction to the aircrew, thus it might have contributed to the confusion.
Neutral SS wouldnīt have cured the problem, only ND SS would have changed the trajectory.
What BEA was getting at with the cited paragraph few posts before is imho, to show the reason for this behaviour without getting too much into details.
@ gums my friend in arms, if i remeber correct the F16 airframe was naturally unstable and a diferent beast. Your comment to blend the Nz-Law with the present (and available) AOA value for a backup in ALT laws with normal protections lost seems a reasonable consideration.