If we had angle of attack (AoA) indicators, that would be different, but we don't...
I have one and believe me, it doesen't make much of a difference. Maybe because I got used to fly without it for several thousand hours. If you are trained to use it right from the beginning it might be more useful. I really only look at it during the flare. Sometimes. Many airliners do have AoA probes, but no AoA indicators in the cockpit!
What is much much much more useful is a trend indicator for the airspeed, now a common feature of every glass cockpit. Without looking at (and interpreting) the precise value of the airspeed indicator you can see at a glance what your speed is doing.
Since you need to measure airflow, I cannot see how this could be done without a permanent installation.
FAA and AOPA push the installation of AoA sensors quite hard:
Even EASA's Carl Thomas talked about AoA sensors in his Friedrichshafen talk.
I'm not so convinced, though.
So that's what Carl had got to lately - he used to do quite a good job of running light aircraft design approvals at UK CAA.
iAoA is a great idea, but it lacks a lot of understanding. Of course we can indicate AoA - but realistically, there really is not a lot of industry/community knowledge of how to use it, and then how to train people to use it. Until that happens, it remains aspirational or something people put in the cockpit and play with a bit.
I've been trying to find resources to do that research for years, but so far have failed, despite a lot of enthusiasm in the community for the idea.
G
Attitude plus Power = Performance works for every airplane, big or small. The only difference is on large aircraft you tend to set the pitch attitude on the AI rather than the natural horizon. But chasing the airspeed works even less well on big airplanes. On these airplanes you have to know what the target attitude you need for every phase of flight. If your first clue is the fact the airspeed is trending in the wrong direction you are allready behind the airplane.
For ab initio flying learning to recognize the attitude of the aircraft by what you see out the windshield is a foundation skill and is essential when you start learning to land.
I used to operate an aircraft with an AoA meter, it was calibrated in "bananas" As far as I recall it was only there to calibrate some of the scientific instruments we carried, we didn't use it up front.
But chasing the airspeed works even less well on big airplanes. On these airplanes you have to know what the target attitude you need for every phase of flight
Perhaps that is because jets cruise close to Vbg and thus fly at a more pronounced up-pitch than a GA plane when doing 150kt?
On my TB20 I see tiny changes in pitch on the AI - so small that the pitch information from the instrument is almost useless for any speed regime except very slow flight. Next time I fly I will take a close look but I would bet the change is between 3 deg and 5 deg which is too small to see readily. And that assumes the AI has been screwed into the panel straight, which few are.
an AoA meter, it was calibrated in "bananas"
I think thats quite normal. Ours is calibrated from "0" to "1". All you have to know is that Vref is 0.6 on the scale - and that's also the only explicit AoA value given in the AFM. During the recurrent trainings they teach you a value for best glide in case of both engine fail (.35 or .4, can't remember - there is a table in the emergency checklist with IAS versus aircraft mass which I would use in case it happens). And apart from that, the manual states: "The angle-of-attack (AOA) indicating system may be used as a reference system but does not replace the airspeed display in the PFD as a primary instrument."
All you have to know is that Vref is 0.6 on the scale
Ours was not in the AFM as it was a scientific add-on so we had no such data. O - 1 sounds about right, the "yellow" band.
On my TB20 I see tiny changes in pitch on the AI - so small that the pitch information from the instrument is almost useless for any speed regime except very slow flight. Next time I fly I will take a close look but I would bet the change is between 3 deg and 5 deg which is too small to see readily. And that assumes the AI has been screwed into the panel straight, which few are.
I think this is a real issue with vacuum attitude indicators. On my Aspen I can easily read pitch accurate to about 1 degree in moderate turbulence (I'm not saying I can hand fly that accurately...). On my backup vacuum AI I am lucky if I can fly to within 5. All glass indicators I've seen have a much larger scale than the standard size vacuum indicators, along with finer markings.
Peter, in your thread on the SG102, it looks like the Sandel would be much easier to fly on...
