@ Nuts: You may have cracked the code.
Doesn't the achieved 'gee' come in? The sidestick may have been demanding +2.5 g, but the stalled airplane, even with elevator and THS fully NU, couldn't comply?
[edit] Yep, if the jet can't give you anymore, than it's the same as a conventional plane, like a J-3 Cub. you can "command" all you want, but the plane and HAL won't help.[edit]
One problem with the commercial planes is you can't fly them to the limits of the FBW "protections" or "laws" during training. Best I can figure, you can't introduce failures and such in flight. So the pilots have to depend upon sim flights, right?
Our primitive system 35 years ago allowed us to demonstrate the FBW limits on the very first flight with a newbie. Pull, pull, pull hard as you want. O.K., see AoA reach limit, but keep pulling. O.K. now command full roll. O.K. release some back pressure, even push forward. [edit] We never knew if we had reached the actual capabilities of the jet except in one case- the deep stall, where even HAL couldn't provide enuf nose down to break the stall, regardless of our stick input. Two decades later, there was an actual training program to expose pilots to those aero conditions that HAL could not handle.[edit]
[edit] The deal is that most FBW control laws never allow the jet to reach its aero limits. In a few cases, you will actually get to a condition that the "laws" and control surface limits come into play. With degraded system inputs like airspeed/dynamic pressure then all bets are off. Then we ignore AoA. So we're in a hybrid control law that may or may not "help" us. Without the traditional "feel" of more back stick or less back stick that is related to AoA/speed, then you are in trouble. The THS implementation doesn't help, IMHO. [edit]