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Mark,
No one is suggesting that AOA is the
cure to accidents or that it offers a way to avoid stall training.
The point is that it's a tool which provides an aural stall warning that would
hopefully help prevent a stall in the first place, and a visual display of the
wing's efficiency should you have to recover from one.
As I'm sure you know, an overly aggressive stall recovery can lead to another stall,
a departure or even a spin. An AOA, if properly used, enhances stall
recovery by giving you an indication of when the wing is producing optimum
lift.
While Lancair advocates the inclusion
of stall strips on its 4 seaters, most of us (myself included) didn't put them
on. My reason for not doing so was that I knew I'd have an AOA display to
show me and actually tell me in my headset if I was approaching a
stall. The only time I should ever hear that voice is in the flare.
I still performed approaches to stall during my flight testing, but with the
forward CG I have with only me in the plane, I couldn't get the nose to break,
even at full aft stick. I experienced the same thing in Lancair's factory
ES. Especially after viewing and reading Dave Allen's account of the
unintentional spin he got into in an ES was a stark illustration that we don't
want to do intentional deep stalls in these planes. From my
viewpoint, the tails (particularly the rudders) aren't big enough to get out of
a fully developed spin, especially with an aft CG. Lancair Certified
addressed this issue on the Columbia 400 with a larger rudder and strake on the
empennage.
I'm a strong advocate
for stall and spin training for anyone who flys a Lancair- just do
it in another kind of plane.
Skip Slater
N540ES
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