Stalls - Angle of Attack versus Vstall

"Aluckyguess" wrote in message
...
Bottom line the wing needs airspeed to fly. At a certain speed the wing
starts to lift, when it loses this speed, losing lift it stalls.

IMHO, this is a misleading description of stalling, and in fact will lead to
just the confusion the original poster describes.

Specifically, the wing's speed is really not directly related to stalling at
all. As others have explained, the reason a stall speed is published is
that it is true that at a given weight and load factor (eg max gross and
1g), there is a specific amount of lift required, and there is a specific
speed associated with the angle of attack that can produce that lift.

The published stalling speed is simply a speed at which the angle of attack
required to achieve the necessary lift at that speed is the same as the
critical (stalling) angle of attack. It is not true that under all
conditions, at that speed, the wing is stalled (or "when it loses this
speed, losing lift it stalls"). The wing loses lift because it stalls, not
the other way around. And the wing will only stall at a given airspeed if
its angle of attack exceeds the critical angle of attack. This is true of
any airspeed, above or below the published stall speed(s).

Stick your hand out the window of your car shape it like a wing at a
certain speed it will lift all by itself and basically be weightless.

However, as long as you keep your "hand wing" angle of attack below the
critical angle of attack, it will generate lift at ANY speed above 0. There
is no "stalling speed" for your hand in that scenario, as your hand is not
required to support itself with lift, and so there is no speed at which the
required angle of attack equals or exceeds the critical angle of attack.
(That is, there's not even a concept of "the required angle of attack" in
that case...your hand will fly along quite happily at any amount of lift, or
even zero lift).

Pete