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John,
Im's so old
I carrier-qualified in SNJ-7s in 1954 on the USS Monterrey, controlled by
watching the LSO's paddles, and before AOAs, which came in three years later,
the year I got out. The Navy didn't know about or teach AOAs or the
meatball back then, but also a lot of guys in the fleet were flying into the
fantail or stalling and falling into the water... because carrier approach
speeds had gone from 90 knots to 130 knots, and there wasn't time for the LSO
and pilot -- when they were close enough to each other to see LSO signals, to
communicate the condition of the plane flying so close to stall AOA. The
Brits invented the AOA-fresnel system we adopted in 1956 , and have used
for 40 years, to this day... as you know... with wonderful, life-saving
instant results... cutting landing crashed 50% the very first year, and we're
talking very professional, top-quality trained pilots here.
I have to
point out a few things in your comments, if you don't mind. Maybe you
haven't thought about them in just this way. Keep your mind open, so you can
consider shifting your attitude a little. What you say is true, but I
think -- incomplete. You're talking about avoiding danger. I'm
talking about getting out of situations that are already BAD.
I spent a
lot of time many years ago reading 800 NTSB accident reports involving
GenAv with fatalities that covered a 14 year period, and I also referenced
Navy publications on the subject. No commercial or military fatalities, or
helicopter accidents were included in my study. I evaluated,
then analyzed the results, and wrote an 8-page article for Kitplanes Magazine
published in December, 1998. The Kitplanes editor then was Dave Martin,
who had hundreds of traps as a back-seater in F4s, and loved the
article.
I found the
NTSB is not at all uniform in analyzing or labelling the CAUSE of a fatal
accidents. They still are not. So for my study I first
defined a uniform fatal-accident-'cause' as: the last thing that
happens before a pilot loses control or crashes into something.
Thus, engine failure is not a 'cause', because he could still glide and land
with no fatality. But inadvertant stalling, or spinning and unable to
recover before flying into something, or a wing coming off a P210, I label
a 'cause'.. Etc. Okay? .
That agreed
to, then I found that for the 14 years prior to my 1998 study, 28% of all
general aviation type-certified airplanes 5222 fatal accidents were caused by
unintentional stalls. Twenty-eight percent! In the same time
frame, among Experimental amateur-builts' 701 fatal accidents, 45.3% or
318 were caused by unintentional stalls. Forty-five percen t!
These rates had remained practically unchanged during the 14 years covered by
the reports I analyzed.
You said:
The airspeed indicator was neither
accurate enough nor quick enough to handle these kinds of approaches.
There simply is no reason for any experienced civilian pilot to get anywhere
near stall speed low except in a flare over the runway and therefore no need for
the kind of precision and quick response afforded by an
AOA.
That's true. Bujt your phrase
'...there is simply no reason ...' is the -- incomplete consideration
here. Accidents don't happen because someone's doing something
'reasonable'; but often quite the opposite. Or, as the bumper sticker says
"Shit happens!" --- usually when you're concentrating on something else, or
just having a good time, or you are confronting a vacuum-system failure and a
vomiting backseater, a 'revolting development', a Jimmy Durante used to
say. Then what?
THEN, you
NEED to see how close you can fly your wing to its stall angle, without stalling
it, because you don't want to hit the damn trees, or
whatever...right?
Without an
AOA VANE (not lights or horns), you're SOL. You're BLIND!
With an AOA
vane, you can fly your wing ONE DEGREE below its stall AOA, all afternoon long,
NOT stall your wing, not hit the trees, make it back to the runway.
Then you also note, correctly
but incompletely --
...
non-military pilots have a problem with understanding aircraft performance at
high angles of bank and high g loadings. We get the idea of how to avoid
1g stalls in the pattern fairly quickly but I see report after report of
experienced pilots stalling out while pulling high g's low or trying to get to a
runway after an engine failure by doing a very steep turn and not understanding
what happens to sink rate if you do that.
True. But it's not 'sink rate'. It's AOA. The
wing stalls at a fixed AOA, no matter what the Gs or bank angle. These
folks are stalling out because they're AIR-BLIND ... they can not SEE
that they themselves are pulling their wing's AOA right past it's stall
AOA. When they do that, they're committing unintentional-suicide, because
they are giving away control! Because they have no AOA vane, to
SEE exactly how far they can go ... how much lift they can tap
into..
I have been flying with an AOA since 1964,
and oh, what a relief it is. I can bank as steeply as I want, anywhere,
while watching the AOA, so I do not pull the wing to its stall angle.
After four years flying in the Navy i though i knew a
lot about how an airplane works. Then I bought the last Waco TC
project and restored it, and began flight-testing ... and realized I needed to
know what was going on with the wing in different tests. So I made myself
a simple AOA vane, like Orville and Wilbur's thread, and put it on the left
wing, in my field of vision, and -- was soon saying to myself "I didn't realize
that!"
For example, I realized that if the wing is
pitch-trimmed about it's aerodynamic center --- usually about 25% MAC -- and you
initiate a climb or a glide and release the controls, it will; not stall.
It may zoom or dive but the pitch trim sets the wing's AOA, and holds the
trimmed AOA. Most planes will not trim the AOA up to the wing's stall
AOA... so it's the PILOT who causes a stall, by pulling the wing up past
its stall AOA.
I remember the joy of realizing that that
afternoon, and then flying my old Waco around for 45 minutes, one degree befow
its stall AOA, climbing, zooming, making 90-degree
banks, and pulling Gs or zero Gs... and never stalling!
So I wrote articles for Sport Aviation, and magazines,
and even made some AOAs and sold them... and for 20+ years have been trying to
get this basic, simple knowledge to other pilots. But 99% of them --
syllabus-trained -- don't get it. They just don't get it! A few
ultralight guys love the AOAs, (not trained wrong by FAA guidelines?) and a
couple of airline pilots told me they're trying to get their bosses to put
AOAs into their planes, but most folks fly by rote, by habits they learned at
the beginning. Airspeedairspeedairspeed. It is just -- pathetic, to
see good people, people I like, kill themselves, and leave their devastated
loving family and friends behind.
Can anyone tell me how to force the FAA to REQUIRE
GenAv aircraft, old and new, to put AOA VANES ... the most BASIC of all flight
instruments of AIR-PLANES ... vehicles that 'plane' their wings at angles
through the air, to lift themselves up... not going to too high a 'stall' AOA ...??? Or, how to
communicate and demonstrate the life-saving safety this simple device, that
anyone can make, that it should be on every air-plane?
The FAA could buy and give away and pay to have glued
on every GenAv's wing an AOA, for pennies, what they blow on 'safety' every year
... and cut fatalities 25% the first year! Back
in the 1960s I wrote Najeeb Halaby, then FAA director, and he referred me to the
FAA's petulant head safety guy ... who was incensed that the suggestion came
from the top-down to him ... and that was the end of that.
So, if you -- like me -- think you know how airplanes
really work, I challenge you to put an AOA vane on your left wing and go up and
play with it.
Not only willit tell you what your fixed stall angle
is, but it will tell you exactly how much you have to pitch the AOA DOWN, to
unstall it, with minimum altitude loss!
Opinions and comments are invited.
Terrence O'Neill
L235/320 N211AL
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