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Thread: Angle of Attack
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Old 7th Jan 2016, 23:26
  #12 (permalink)  
n5296s
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
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I guess I'm the odd man out, I just don't see the point. If you understand basic pilot-level aerodynamics, it's all obvious. And if you don't, all the fancy gauges in the world won't help you. Hence it wouldn't have helped with AF447, because those guys were just totally lost and in tunnel-vision panic mode, to do what they did. (And ditto the recent Air Asia accident). If it isn't obvious to you that keeping the stick hard back while descending at 5000+ fpm is a bad idea, one little instrument among many won't help.

I've been yelled at on here for daring to utter the phrase "stall speed", but actually it's a pretty useful concept. It's extremely rare to try and land (or take off) in a 60 degree bank, never done it myself. And if you can remember some very simple math, the airspeed indicator makes a pretty decent AoA susbtitute assuming you're not trying to do loops.
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