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Naval Aircraft and AOA

AllAmerican75

FUBIJAR
None
Contributor
“Fucking student almost killed me today...probably should’ve ejected, that approach turn stall was nasty...but I saved it!”
Things said at the dinner table...

Slight threadjack: Do military aircraft all have AoA sensors or just the normal stall warnings? AoA sensors seem to be becoming all of the rage in GA to prevent this exact occurrence.
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
Slight threadjack: Do military aircraft all have AoA sensors or just the normal stall warnings? AoA sensors seem to be becoming all of the rage in GA to prevent this exact occurrence.
Good question and yes, way ahead on this. Naval airplanes have had them since about 1960 or so. Some of the aftermarket systems available to GA are very good and comparable to what we have in naval air while other systems are quite inferior... Suffice to say the general understanding and application of AoA flying in the GA world also leaves a lot to be desired.
 

picklesuit

Dirty Hinge
pilot
Contributor
No AOA on P-8, just some sweet symbology to tell you that you are fucked.

T-6B has AOA, but that is WAAAYYYYY outside the scan of most students, especially the shitty ones.

They are still trying to handle airspeed, heading, altitude...
 

HuggyU2

Well-Known Member
None
I really cannot imagine a manned military aircraft being built in the US without an AoA anymore. The USAF's T-7 will have AoA.

That said, I have yet to fly a Boeing airliner that displays the AoA to the pilots. The data is available... but not put on any displays. Maybe Airbus does it?

The U-2 didn't have AoA or any kind of electronic stall warning for a long time. About 20 years ago, we got AoA... we are told it is the AoA hardware from the Navy P-3. We still "fly airspeed" primarily, but the slick part of the system is the tones you get in the headset as you are on final through touchdown. You could fly the whole approach and landing and never look inside. Frankly, the tone setup we have is something I'd put in any aircraft I owned. No need to add anything to your visual crosscheck.

I agree with Jim in that, although AoA popularity is increasing in the GA world, many of the pilots that use it don't seem to understand the basic concepts. There are many pilots in the Cirrus world that post about AoA, and that swear that having AoA is solution to crashing aircraft. Problem solved! I wish they were right.

Alpha Systems seems to be one of the industry leaders. "Cabi" moonlights for them when they are at Oshkosh, and here's a video with him explaining it. If you recognize him, it's because he was the pilot that flew the U-2 with James May from Top Gear back in 2009.

edit: I just watched the video. Their beeps are similar to what we have... but not as good. Cabi says they also have "tones", but I've never heard them.

 
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HAL Pilot

Well-Known Member
None
Contributor
Back in my day.... we had an AOA indicator in the P-3 but none of our pilots knew how to use it and no one knew if it was even calibrated.
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
My aircraft doesn't have an AoA indicator per se, but the 4/rev vibes and thwop, thwop, thwop are a good sign you're at the limit.
When you hit retreating blade stall then you'll sure as hell know it. A lot of guys have said to me, "I think I got into it once," and I'm like, "I don't think you were in it, just by the way you casually said that just now." It's like sitting in a stacking chair while a really big person rocks the shit out of your chair, and one of the most, um, exciting things you'll ever feel in an aircraft.

Funny thing about AoA indicators and your post (not picking on you here, you just left me an opening), the way the FAA and the GA industry have billed add-on AoA systems is the root of the problem- they're billed as merely extra stall warnings rather than a primary instrument. The FAA is constrained here because they'd have to rewrite a whole bunch of their training pubs (easier said than done!) and change some rules too. The magazines have been happy to oblige by kind of dumbing it down, unfortunately- although they too would incur liability by spreading too many "good ideas" about how to fly AoA the Navy way.

Big picture, I'm pretty happy how the FAA sidestepped most of their own bureaucracy by allowing the systems in the way that they have, as a minor modification with very little paperwork.
 

Treetop Flyer

Well-Known Member
pilot
I really cannot imagine a manned military aircraft being built in the US without an AoA anymore. The USAF's T-7 will have AoA.

That said, I have yet to fly a Boeing airliner that displays the AoA to the pilots. The data is available... but not put on any displays. Maybe Airbus does it?

The U-2 didn't have AoA or any kind of electronic stall warning for a long time. About 20 years ago, we got AoA... we are told it is the AoA hardware from the Navy P-3. We still "fly airspeed" primarily, but the slick part of the system is the tones you get in the headset as you are on final through touchdown. You could fly the whole approach and landing and never look inside. Frankly, the tone setup we have is something I'd put in any aircraft I owned. No need to add anything to your visual crosscheck.

I agree with Jim in that, although AoA popularity is increasing in the GA world, many of the pilots that use it don't seem to understand the basic concepts. There are many pilots in the Cirrus world that post about AoA, and that swear that having AoA is solution to crashing aircraft. Problem solved! I wish they were right.

Alpha Systems seems to be one of the industry leaders. "Cabi" moonlights for them when they are at Oshkosh, and here's a video with him explaining it. If you recognize him, it's because he was the pilot that flew the U-2 with James May from Top Gear back in 2009.

edit: I just watched the video. Their beeps are similar to what we have... but not as good. Cabi says they also have "tones", but I've never heard them.

An AoA indication is an option for the 737. My employer didn’t opt for it, but it’s on their MAX’s I believe
 

Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
I remember the old man telling me that the F-16 (and I think the A-10) had AoA indexers, but they worked opposite of how the Navy ones do. Navy ones tell you what to do with the nose, AF ones point to whether you're fast or slow.
 

SynixMan

HKG Based Artificial Excrement Pilot
pilot
Contributor
I remember the old man telling me that the F-16 (and I think the A-10) had AoA indexers, but they worked opposite of how the Navy ones do. Navy ones tell you what to do with the nose, AF ones point to whether you're fast or slow.

After 10 years of Navy flying, that shit would break my brain. Like Y-Axis inversion on video games.

BT BT

Getting AoA into my scan came ~6 months into flying the T-6B as an IP, once the new-ness of flying FW, being above 1kft, flying at 240 KIAS, FTI procedures, etc wore off. It's an extremely useful piece of kit, but SNAs especially have such a helmet fire with the basics that it's mostly lost on them. Occasionally you'd get a prior NFO or 1k hour GA background who could digest the information, but it was rare. The Max Range diamond (triangle?) was also super useful on CCXs.
 

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
I don't know if the T-6 has much of a phugoid mode, but a cool demonstration would be to fly a stick fixed phugoid while watching the AOA. The phugoid is to a first approx a constant AOA behavior, so you'd see speeds +/- 30 knots from the set point but at whatever AOA you started with.

For any of you instructors out there (or if you have another plane with AOA and some free time), pick your center point of (say) 120 Kts and get it trimmed level flight power. Note the AOA. Note the position of the stick.

Now pull back and get the nose up and hold it until you say 20 Kts below the target speed, in this case 100 Kts. Reset the stick to where it was for 120 Kts and fix it there. You will arc over the top, losing some more airspeed.

With a yoke on a shaft coming out of the panel, you can grab the shaft where it exits the panel at 120 Kts and use that for a precise reference when you pull back and then reset it. Bit trickier with a stick.

With the phugoid mode, the plane will go over the top, back down, pass through 120 Kts to some higher speed, back up, back down, etc. The behavior should be damped, with the altitude excursions getting smaller each cycle. But the AOA should stay pretty much fixed at whatever it was for 120 Kts level flight.

Someone try it with a T-6 and let me know.
 

sevenhelmet

Low calorie attack from the Heartland
pilot
Can confirm, T-6 has an observable phugoid mode, as do most conventionally stable airplanes, unless masked by other flying qualities. I evaluated it on the T-6 years ago as part of a longitudinal stability checkride at USNTPS. I'd dig up the numbers, but that's sort of like showing off my 8th grade math homework. Cliff notes: It goes up and down, and converges over time (apparent positive static longitudinal stability).

Can also confirm, USAF AOA brackets and indexer lights (in the F-16 & T-38 at least) work opposite USN. Why wouldn't they? ? We trained to airspeed-based approaches in the T-38, so after a flight or two it wasn't a big deal.

Bonus points for working in "grab the shaft" to your post. :D
 
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nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
I’d call all y’all nerds, but that’d be kind of like the proverbial pot and the kettle.

Yes, I dropped aerospace engineering in undergrad, but 15 years later, I found myself looking at static stability derivatives in Kerbal Space Program for fun . . . ?
 

AllAmerican75

FUBIJAR
None
Contributor
I’d call all y’all nerds, but that’d be kind of like the proverbial pot and the kettle.

Yes, I dropped aerospace engineering in undergrad, but 15 years later, I found myself looking at static stability derivatives in Kerbal Space Program for fun . . . ?

There are a lot of things we do for fun in Kerbal Space Program. I've never had another game that made me want to make spreadsheets for delta-V calculations and orbital windows.

Before anyone chimes in, yes, I understand I'm a nerd. It's literally in my job description.
 
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