As part of our Oshkosh LIVE coverage, KITPLANES editor at large Paul Dye took time out from seeing the sights to talk about the importance of angle of attack instrumentations, which is now almost common in LSA and homebuilt aircraft. Pretty much any airplane with a modern EFIS already has most of the hardware and there are standalone systems that can bring this old but still incredibly useful technology into the cockpit.
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Thank Marc and Paul, agree with every word. I have a uAvionix AV-30 in my airplane (it has “derived” AOA as described in the video) and have been impressed with its performance and the additional information it provides to the low/slow regimes of flight.
I don’t think a AOA indicators “always tells the truth” with respect to stalls. The biggest variation in angle of attack at stall is propably due to flap position. Be careful about flying to the AOA limit if your flaps are in a different position than when you calibrated it. I think there is also variations with yaw, throttle setting & airfoil deviations such as airframe icing, bugs and damage.
Cessnas have had a crude form of AOA indictor for years’ the stall warning buzzer. The closer to a stall the louder and more shrill it gets. No, it doesn’t give as much information as a dedicated AOA indicator but it does give the pilot a warning. The stall buzzer has saved my bacon a number of times when students get carried away, particularly near the ground.