On Dec 20, 5:17 pm, "kirk.stant" wrote:
Sure. I used AOA in T-38s (a little - not much flight time in those)
and in F-4s (about 2000 hours in those). In my current job, I fly a
variety of F-15 simulators (the real thing, not PC games) and use AOA
all the time. Have also a few flight in F-16s and a lot of time in
F-16 simulators, which use AOA in the approach and landing
configuration.

Excellent post Kirk. I was about to ask if anyone had fighter-jet
experience and you do! I was going to ask as I recall that in an
accident report on a fatal stall/spin after a missed approach to a
carrier by a F-14 one of the key aspects had been the crew's
monitoring of the AoA. IIRC - though I'm not sure I do - the rear-seat
crew member actually calls out the AoA to the front-seat pilot, who
has too many tasks to do to also include checking the AoA in their
scan.

Finally, someone questioned about whether it's better to thermal
efficiently or in the best part of the themal. The answer, IMHO, is
that you should strive to do both. Right now we have wonderful
instruments to help us find the best lift. But we still use a crude
instrument to fly efficiently. Well, actually, most people probably
thermal more by feel and attitude than by staring at the airspeed
indicator.

I was thinking the same thing. I have often wondered about the best
speed to fly at any given moment when thermalling, including using
that online calculator thing to get some guidelines which were a fair
bit faster than I thought they would be. As you say, it's odd that we
have great varios, but nothing very good to get the most from our
wings.

I'd be interested in an AoA indicator for performance reasons, but not
so much for safety, where I personally think a good safety margin on
the ASI does the job (plus not leaving it too late to have to pick a
small field to land in, so ground-roll distance is such a factor).


Dan