>> If one comes to depend on an angle of attack indicator, one
may be at a disadvantage if it goes U/S at the wrong time.<<
My desire for an AOA meter is that I find it hard to judge attitude and height
close to the ground, especially through my bi focals, and consequently I
occasionally get Bounced, usually when I thought I'd got it hacked, through
either rounding out too high, rounding out too low or an unseen hump on the
ground. The result of being Bounced is a very high AOA, nothing visible in front
and a sinking feeling closely followed by the next bounce and subsequent
embarassment. The correct response to the first Bounce is full throttle and go
round, regularly demonstrated in the past by our Leader. He knew something I'm
only just learning. The result of that strategy is that the second bounce has a
small b. If runway (and spare brain capacity) permits you can then back off the
power and try again.
Europa is certainly an honest airplane.
The dampers help a lot in reducing the pitch up after a bounce and this gives
the inexperienced taildragger pilot a bit more latitude and less steep learning
curve. I wonder if an AOA meter might help too in easing the bumps of the
learning curve. In mitigation may I add that I learnt on taildraggers but 10
years of flying nothing but EZs diluted my previous experience. EZs make old men
feel young again :-)
Final thought, the stall strips are there for two reasons, primarily to give 5
knots before the stall of warning and secondarily to allow the actual stall
itself to be "trimmed" level should the airplane not be quite straight.
More of your valued thoughts, please Peter?
Graham
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