Could you explain a little more. The situation at the moment seems to
be "every glider (bar a few primaries) has an instrument, which if
given attention, will alert the pilot if s/he is flying too slowly on
approach. Despite this, a few pilots manage to fly too slow and
crash".

If that started off ""every glider (bar a few primaries) has an
instrument, which if given attention, will alert the pilot if s/he is
flying at too high an AoA on approach", can you explain why it would
not end

"Despite this, a few pilots manage to fly at too high an AoA and
crash".

In short, why would pilots who ignore the ASI pay attention for an AoA
meter?

Ian

Ian, we appear to be comparing apples and oranges - you are talking
about not stalling on final, while I am talking about being able to
accurately thermal, and incidentally have a better instrument for
flying accurate approaches. You are absolutely correct that anyone
who ignores all the indications of an approaching stall will likely do
the same when an AOA indicator is installed. That is a different
issue altogether. What we AOA proponents are saying is that the
cherished airspeed indicator is really a poor substitute for an AOA
indicator in certain phases of flight - mainly low speed ones such as
thermalling and approaches - where accurate flying is important. The
fact that we do so well with airspeed just proves that gliders are
really easy to fly, and pilots quickly learn the characteristics of
their glider.

Will an AOA guage make you a safer pilot, in a modern glider? Maybe a
little; its funny how all power planes have to have an AOA (not
airspeed) controlled stall warning device to be certified. In my
experience, light power planes not really more susceptible to approach
stalls than gliders, but there are more distractions - including that
noisy thing in the front just waiting to quit! Yet they mandate stall
warnings.

Again, in my perfect glider, I would have a nice unambiguous AOA
indication of Clmax (for thermalling), Approach Cl (say at 1.3 Vstall)
- maybe change to this when the gear is down; and L/D max (flaps up).
I don't need to know the specific stall AOA - there is no reason to be
slower than Cl max so by definition I need to reduce AOA if I'm above
that. But I do want to be able - regardless of my ballast load and
bank angle - to slow to the most efficient AOA when pulling into a
thermal. When faster than L/D max, I'm probably flying a McCready
speed, which is not affected by AOA, and needs to be set using the
airspeed indicator.

Obviously, my opinion is colored by having actually flown airplanes
with excellent AOA systems, and by my wish to optimise my soaring for
XC and racing. I really think that within a few years someone will
come up with a simple, low drag, accurate AOA system that will be
adopted by the same group of pilots who eagerly adopted radios, TE,
audio varios, glide computers, GPS, PDA moving maps, transponders,
ELTs, traffic detection devices - all those "unecessary" gadgets that
clutter up our cockpits but, in my opinion, make soaring safer, more
efficient, and more fun.

Cheers,

Kirk