Hi Ian,
> The stall strips do help define the stall, seem to offer no performance
> penalty
and are worth putting on.
True, but it's worth remembering that if the aircraft is vibrating a lot (due to
the engine running very roughly), the pre-stall buffet is quite likely to be
undetectable.
Having been in that situation (engine running so roughly as to make continued
flight
impossible), I am pretty sure that if the speed had decreased sufficiently
for the stall strips to become effective, the first thing I would have noticed
was the wing dropping.
Even with the stall strips fitted, the speed margin between buffet and stall on
a Europa can be uncomfortably small. It's all very well doing a few stalls at
height in an LAA flight test and happily noting down that there's 3kt (or
whatever)
buffet margin but in a real engine failure situation the pilot is under
real pressure and that small margin is likely to come and go without them
noticing.
Cheers,
Mark
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=380382#380382
|