'Knowing' that their aircraft stalls at a certain speed has killed many pilots. In fact it's possible to stall an aircraft at any speed because stall is about angle of attack, not airspeed. The quoted stall speed for an aircraft is usually calculated when the aircraft is straight and level and if you're lucky at max weight. Bank the aircraft and the stall speed goes up. During low speed manoeuvring (e.g. turning onto final) you might be a lot closer to the stall than you realise, even though you're well above the quoted stall speed. Get a little bit slower than usual and bank a little harder than usual (e.g. because you overshot the centreline) and you might find yourself spiralling into the ground.
Here's a question though. The AOA probe is fitted to one or other wing. But an inadvertent spin such as I've just described is caused by one wing stalling while the other is still flying. Does an AOA probe fitted to one wing detect an impending stall situation equally for both wings? Or should it be fitted to the left wing on the basis that the turns in the circuit are usually left turns and it's the inside wing that's more likely to stall? Cheers, Tony _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
