Zane wrote:
Exchange photos of your penises and get it over with.

Anyone here who sends me photos of his penises will immediately be referred to a friend of mine in the adult entertainment business. You will be a very highly paid attraction... Most of us only have one.

One more great use of my AOA is steep canyon turns. When I am in a canyon or practicing I can either calculate my stall speed for a given outside air temp, altitude, weight, and angle of turn or I can check my AOA indicator which does it all for me and guarantees a turn that takes up the least amount of real estate and does not risk a stall.

The alternative is to practice this in the clear in a variety of conditions and occasionally stalling the plane in a steep turn, then hoping that my feel of the aircraft is right on when I am doing it in real life.

I have a blast pulling way steeper and slower than I ever would have had the balls to otherwise and the AOA is dead on every time regardless of aircraft loading or environmental conditions.

Just more food for thought.

And as for not bringing up topics already talked about? Hmmmm, hangar talk would be pretty rare anymore and maybe we should just give up on the forum. I had nothing better to do than weigh in, and last time it came up, I did not have the first hand experience.

-Brad

Without getting into the discussion of whether or not to use / have one, I thought I would share a link to a hombuilder whom made one of these himself for a fraction of the price:

http://tincantimes.dcsol.com/LRI.html

Using an AoA indicator for turn performance is kind of like using an engine monitor for leaning - you can lean by using the old pull it out until it gets rough then richen a bit off that, or you can reference the indicated temps. In both cases the mixture ends up in basically the same place but with the engine monitor you have the added degree of confidence of knowing the exact temps.

For an AoA indicator to be truly useful it should have aural cueing (piped into your intercom) to accompany the visual speed indications. And ideally the indicator is mounted high on your panel or above the panel in your field of view - you certainly don't want to go heads down to reference it when in maneuvering or terminal flight.

Two points distinguish the utility of of AoA indicators in heavier class aircraft - one is that the difference in approach speed at gross is drastically different from approach speed when light due to the significant amount of fuel that is burned off in flight (or ordnance dropped). The second is that for the probe(s) to be effective they need to be in undisturbed air, generally not a concern for jet aircraft where the probes are placed forward of the intakes.

Utility of an AoA system in light GA aircraft is arguable as long as the limitations of the application are understood, principal among them asymmetric airflow from propwash and slips. If nothing else they would be redeeming for canyon turns as Durango Skywagon explained - regardless of the ambient conditions or weight just pull to on-speed. Just like the engine monitor example you could probably just pull to a light buffet or stall horn and get the 90% solution but the AoA gauge would remove all the guess work and squeeze every last bit of lift out of the wing.

Everyone makes a good point on the AOA. Unfortunately Sparky was killed in a tight canyon turn. I guess he had an AOA but who knows. The articles support the fact that he did. Maybe he didn't have it at the time and got used to it...who knows. So many gadgets just create more and more weight. Pilots have flown without them for years and years. Heck, what did we ever do before the internet.

I guess we should consider one of these: http://www.meriweather.com/320/over/gpws.html

I dont know. For a large aircraft going in and out of the big airports great, but I just dont think its for me but then again some like wheel pants on there 180. For each there own again.

Moto- just go fly your airplane and have fun doing it. Maybe the AOA will get you to where you want to be.

Vick-come up to the lake this weekend. Weather is going to be good! Will be flying our very noisy airplanes around. I believe I owe you one!

AKT

Sorry that I made folks feel like I was puffing my chest. Just giving background experience to back up my remarks, for those who haven't read my published stories. We are gone. I don't belong here.

Just to clear up now Sparky died. He was in an earlier crash with a student teaching canyon turns in a Husky and it stalled. This happened very near to where he died. It appeared that Sparky had flown over the spot to look at it again, prior to the crash. Sparky was in the back of the Husky writing and didn't see the stalling coming up or it would not have happened.
He was killed flying his Cessna 180 level onto the ground and hit a berm which flipped him and the plane burned. We think the crash was health related, but no way to know. He was headed home in the valley that contains Canyon Ferry Reservoir and was just west of the lake and only 5 miles from the gravel airport on the lake. He was not in a turn and there was no reason to understand why he crashed, at least this is what my friends told me after helping search for him and finding him.

Feedpro- YOU DEFINITELY BELONG HERE! I would say that everyone on here loves to fly. No feathers were ruffled at all. Internet can come off a bit brash. I know I can certainly come off that way but its not intended thats for certain.

Like someone else said, hanger talk really doesn't even exist anymore in most parts. This is it. I just happen to be waiting for the wind to die down as it is blowing 50 across the ridges now. I have nothing better to do than lerk here all darn day today. Besides, every-time a new post pops up it shows up on my Iphone.

Keep posting

AKT

feedpro wrote:Sorry that I made folks feel like I was puffing my chest. Just giving background experience to back up my remarks, for those who haven't read my published stories. We are gone. I don't belong here.

Ahhhh bullshit. Don't go runnin' off. There's everything on this site from old Alaska Sled Drivers like me who LOVE to puff our chests out, to student pilots and wannabe's too young and dumb to know not to piss into the wind. It's the Internets for christsake. A big part of the fun is arguing and pissing people off.

On a serious note, the number of old farts flying in the dirt is dwindling fast in this country, and once that experience goes, it's going to be a long time coming back. Not everyone who reads this shit pays attention or learns anything but some do, so you gotta hang in there and keep spreading the word.

Gump

feedpro wrote:Sorry that I made folks feel like I was puffing my chest. Just giving background experience to back up my remarks, for those who haven't read my published stories. We are gone. I don't belong here.

There are topics here that turn the chest puffing knob up to 11 (AOA indicators, short performance technique, big tires, EZ Flap), and I feel compelled to mock them every time, that's just my attempt to draw perspective when feathers ruffle. Any time we're challenging each other to a STOL contest to solve the debate, reason and rhetoric have lost. However, it's ripe for laughs.

So Karl, where are your stories published? Are you a big deal? Should we have read them prior to ribbing you?

Naw bullshit. Who cares about airplanes? How do I make $$$ off pictures of my Johnson. Paging EZ Flap!!!!

Gump

GumpAir wrote:Naw bullshit. Who cares about airplanes? How do I make $$$ off pictures of my Johnson. Paging EZ Flap!!!!

Gump

If you're a congressman, taking pictures of your johnson isn't going to make you $$$ but you might get a nice intern or two before the $#!T hit's the fan.

Feedpro, stick around. Contribute. We need old hands to help season these young whipper-snappers that need lotsa lernen', and don't even know it. I knew it all when I was a young pup, but somehow fate was kind and I survived anyway...... Spreading solid knowledge from real world experience is priceless.....and in this business-may save lives. At least they have the chance to think about some of the pitfalls after they are talked about here.
I think all the seasoned pilots agree on the 'core' issues/techniques/values, it is the peripheral fluff like this that we haggle over. Some fellas are more abrupt than others.... I think everyone one here could teach me something, and some a ton. Sometimes to drink at this well, you have to hold yer nose....but not often. Overall its good.

lc

Yes I have a LRI (AOA) and love it -- about 6-8 years . Mech. kind that does not depend on electrical system .Velcroed to top on Instrument panel .

Again, the point is that an AOA system DOES work very accurately on a jet which has no big fan out front. Unfortunately, in a propeller driven airplane, the "AOA sensor" has to be mounted out on one wing to stay out of prop wash. Since the AOA can and does vary considerably over the span of a wing, particularly in maneuvering flight, a sensor out on one wing provides pretty seriously flawed data on the AOA, giving only the AOA of that particular spot on the wing, which will vary considerably, depending on coordination, from the remainder of the wing.

Look at the sensor on several of these things, then go look at the pitot mast on a Piper Warrior. They look remarkably similar, and the relationship of the pitot tube to the static port on the Warrior looks pretty similar to the "AOA" system's "sensor". And, by the way, they are both mounted on about the same spot on the wing.

In other words, these "AOA devices" as applied to light single engine airplanes provide no better nor worse data than does many a conventional airspeed indicator system. With all the same issues as the AS.

The key is to understand how the air moves around the wing. If you can mount the sensors on the fuselage, and symmetrically, you can install an ACTUAL AOA system, and they are effective.

MTV

Anyone seen any lightweight, low profile solid state gyro-based AOA systems that have a programmable, audible alert (pluggable into the system)?

mtv wrote: If you can mount the sensors on the fuselage, and symmetrically, you can install an ACTUAL AOA system, and they are effective.

MTV

Jackpot, he's right on the money IMHO. And the previous poster who brought up the AOA audible tone... damn you I was working on exactly that and I wanted to keep it a big lockdown secret until I sprung it on all of you and started getting rich on the idea !

In gliders we used an audio tone variometer (super-sensitive rate of climb). It allows you to keep your eyes out of the cockpit and hear all the subtle variations of the air you are flying in. Believe it or not that's a life or death thing when you are one of 20 gliders flying in the same circle, in a bubble of rising air which would fit inside a good size Wal-Mart. As soon as I read about the value of AOA indication for short field work, I put those two ideas together and I started thinking about an audio AOA. I will continue to work on this idea.

Mike's correct about the prop blast and the errors of mounting an AOA on one wing, or having it sense correctly during un-coordinated flight. One of the bigger obstacles to my audio AOA will be a good mounting location, probably on the fin above the propwash. Otherwise it has to be way out forward on a big red and white striped lance, which is ugly and far more difficult to certify.

Hmm. I have no doubt that Mike is technically correct. My personal experience with my AOA is that it gives me much more useable info than my airspeed indicator in lots of different configurations. Also in 300 hours with more than my fair share of practicing agressive maneuvers it has never failed to keep me out of a stall if I want to or predict a stall if thats what I am doing with the airplane.

I take all of my electronic gizmos with a grain of salt and I practice for when any or all fail, but man those lights on that AOA give me good info I can use and that I have come to trust.

-Brad

I was thinking about this, and I think the thing I find unappealing about the AOA indicator is that it's a second instrument, telling you related (not the same) information as ASI, just by measurement of a different piece of data. But when you think about how airspeed and AOA often are related in how we control an approach or climb, it seems like mixing these two on the same instrument would be really useful. A second instrument increases the scan distances and makes more work for the pilot, but an embedded instrument could really be efficient for the human brain.

I made a quick diagram of an idea of mix the two indications into a single primary pitch indicator. For demonstration purposes, I inversely related airspeed and AOA to illustrate what a typical slowing-down increasing AOA profile might resemble. These two piece of data however are measured by entirely different means by instrumentation (pitot/static vs relative wind/AOI)

Outer dial = airspeed
Inner dial = AOA where greater area of red indicates higher AOA.



But consider this scenario as well:

I'd probably patent that idea asap