Guy Alcala wrote:
Mike Marron wrote:
"Gord Beaman" ) wrote:

how can a wing's design decide that?...I'd think that only the
elevators could control the AOA?.

Also see: F-8 Crusader

Why?

An example of an a/c that was able to vary its wing's angle of
incidence in flight.

Correct.

This was presumably intended to be read as followup to his other
message, where he postulates that Al Minyard was referring to AoI
rather than AoA, but that assumes you're familiar with the F-8.

Incorrect. As you said above Guy, it was just an example of an A/C
that was able to vary its wing's angle of incidence in flight.

I have a slightly different reading of Al's intent, but we can let Al tell
us what he meant.

Like I've said, I generally tend to give people of the doubt instead
of automatically assuming they're wrong so I can come back with
some gratuitous, knee-jerk, argumentative retort like Gord does.
In other words, even my ab intitio, pre-solo student pilots know
that angle of attack is created by the tailplane providing a force
(positive or negative) in the direction of the lift of the wings.
Depending on whether the wing lift is foward or aft of the CG, the
elevator will have to produce positive or negative lift to rotate the
A/C about its lateral axis. Basic stuff, hence my willingness to
give Al the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant angle of
incidence rather than angle of attack. I could be wrongly
misinterpreting Al, but I'll sit back now and let Al tell us what he
meant.

-Mike Marron
CFII, A&P, UFI (fixed-wing, weightshift land & sea)