Ken I know this sounds like I am talking out of both sides of my mouth, but no the critical angle of attack does not change, but the speed at which you will reach that angle does change if the wing loading is increased due to excess weight or maneuvers etc...
If you think about a turn, you are using some of your vertical component of lift to turn, so you have to add back pressure to increase the angle of attack to replace the lost vertical lift that you are turning with. As the bank angle increases this replacement angle of attack gets to be quite excessive, and the load increases on the wing causing you to increase the lift even more by pulling back. This continues until you reach the critical angle of attack, but it will happen at a higher speed than in level flight attitude say in slow flight. The same thing occurs if you fly solo and note the stall speed and then load past your gross weight. You will see the speed at which you stall higher because you will reach the critical angle of attack sooner since it is requiring more lift to handle the higher weight to start with. The danger is approach speeds are higher, and landing speeds are higher, and if you do not take the increased weight into account when making your appoach, you could end up coming up short.... Colin & Bev Rainey KR2(td) N96TA Sanford, FL crain...@cfl.rr.com http://kr-builder.org/Colin/index.html
