201er

Brett, you're right. I must have grabbed the mph numbers by accident. However, for 60 degrees bank stall is listed at 83 knots (for gear down and half flaps). That would require 108kts to maintain 1.3Vso. Being down to 7 knots of margin and pulling back a little much or a gust of wind can be enough to turn that into a spin. I don't think most of us do a 108kts base to final turn in a tight pattern (heck that's almost max flaps speed).

I want to make sure I'm over 1.3Vso in the turns. On the straight lines that's easy. But in a 30 degree bank with gear/half flaps, 1.3Vso is over 90knots. Base leg is usually about 90 knots (well above straight/level 1.3Vso) but if you're maintaining that speed through your base to final turn, depending on that bank angle and your weight, you may be dipping below 1.3Vso in the turn without realizing it. That's where the AOA presents you with vital information instantly.

Out of curiosity, could you share what those speeds are and how you derived them? I know I sound like an AOA salesperson. I really don't have a personal agenda in selling them. But there are 3 things I am passionately sold on from outstanding personal experiences: Mooney, Halo Headset, and Angle of Attack Indicator. Those are 3 things I could not do without so I passionately recommend them to others. I think that if others would try them, they would be as thrilled with them as I am myself. These 3 things really stand out above and beyond anything else based on how valuable they are. Yup, it was totally you Brett. You're scaring all the moonyspacers away

Sure, you can use my post. It's taken me many years of improvement to come to terms with these issues but I feel responsible and educated enough at this point to make my mistakes public so others may learn from them. Like I previously stated, without the extensive experience I have gained since, I could not have even have begun to understand my original mistakes. Lots of instructors/books "talk" about stalls. But few enough actually make it happen. I hope you can mention that the most disappointing thing I found was in retrospect was that I was only taught 2 stalls and that they are the ones that don't really happen. Straight and level power off and power on. Turning stall were just taught to me as a coordinated turn where you pull back the same way as in the straight and level. They were not bank angle induced so I did not learn that element. I was never taught to fly with varying weights so I was utterly unprepared to go full gross and increase my minimal speed. I'm sure I was "told" that stall speed goes up. But I was never demonstrated or taught to fly a higher airspeed on climb/approach with that added weight. It's too big a jump for an inexperienced pilot to make. The feeling I got from stall instruction was that they wanted to teach me how to stall. Instructors were always encouraging me to stall harder and let them see the stall prior to recovery. This has been the most useless skill I have been taught. I have never once seen the nose drop like that in real near-stall/stall scenarios. Things have always been far more subtle and it was my awareness of the prestall condition and prestall recovery that saved the day. But it's something I discovered on my own since. My instruction may have indirectly prepared me for it, but it could have more directly prepared me for it by not wasting so much time making me do the same pointless straight ahead intentional stalls over and over again. All my instructors were big on stalls. Just not the right ones and not in the right way. That's what I've learned in 8 years of flying.

Can't read it in that size. But it doesn't even matter. You're really going to be referring to that and interpolating the data when you are steepening up a turn? It's ridiculous. An AOA indicator takes all the math and guesswork out and simply shows your angle of attack. You don't have to know you weight, bank angle, cg, asi error, or airspeed. It just tells you if you're angle of attack is sufficient or not and which way to correct. You could have been a hair more modest with your paint job and covered the cost of installing an AOA and then some. The AOA is providing far more vital information than the IPAD! Proof is in the stats. See how many accidents due to getting lost, CFIT, flight into weather, mid airs vs how many stalls on takeoff/landing.

You should keep your turns coordinated period. And there does not need to be a restriction to 30 degree turns if you fly the right angle of attack. I don't know what 1.3Vso in a 27 degree bank is. But my AOA does and all I have to do is ensure it does not dip below that and I'm fine or add some speed if I increase bank to continue to maintain the appropriate angle of attack. Knock yourself out:

No, no. The AOA serves as the stall warning just the same. I've heard it going off during the stall portions of landings and such so I have a good sense that it is darn close to when the stall actually happens. I just haven't tested it with comparisons to the ASI. I'd like another set of eyes to do that. And when I was talking about the calibration, I was talking about for best angle of climb and such. However, I have found myself getting better VS by following the AOA than the ASI in the initial part of the climb. See my ASI lag response earlier.

Well you can get in with me and we'll find out. I have no idea how accurate the calibration is. However, from my flying experience I just feel that the AOA indication more closely matches my flight condition than the ASI.

The problem with that is it only helps you when a stall is imminent. It doesn't teach or help you avoid getting there in the first place. The AOA indicator gives you that awareness long before the buzzer needs to come on. Stall warning doesn't help you fly Vx or 1.3Vso either.

It would help keep you alive a lot more than a shiny new paint job.

Something I've discovered, and this kind of goes back to my disappointment with all stall instruction I ever received (or more importantly didn't receive) is that real stalls look nothing like practiced stalls. Practiced stalls start in straight and level flight and just pull back. This always felt silly cause you have to pull back a heck of a lot and it's obvious the stall is coming. When you do a turning stall (or just discover you were closer to one than you thought thanks to your AOA), it is usually induced from banking steeper rather than pulling the nose up high. Although you are pulling back during the turn, your pitch attitude stays the same (since you are trying to maintain airspeed) so you aren't aware of it like you are in the straight ahead practice stall. I have done a few turning stalls with an instructor and even on my flight test. But they were NOTHING like real turning stalls. Basically I was just told to turn and pull back during the turn till it stalls. I don't think anybody does this. It makes no sense to and it's absolutely obvious you'll make yourself stall that way. What's less obvious is that in a 40 degree bank at gross weight, you'll stall at 66 knots which is easily more than normal touchdown speed! 1.3Vso would require 86 knots during the turn. I think the reason a lot of pilots get away with flying unaware of their AOA is because they pick general numbers that should work in any configuration (and generally erring on the side of being too fast... see all landing trouble threads). They fly 100kts on downwind, 90 on base, 80 on final, 70 on short final. That 90 knots on base makes that 40 degree turn work out. But what if we inadvertently went to 60 degrees? 83 knots would be the stall speed. That is cutting it mighty close. 1.3Vso would require 108 knots!!! That's more than you'd be flying in that stage of the pattern. BTW, another thing I've noticed. The airspeed indicator appears to lag during takeoff. Has anyone else noticed this? After I rotate and begin to climb, it may say 80 knots. However, the climb rate isn't appropriate for 80 knots. Nor is the angle of attack. The angle of attack indicator shows me being slower than this. But as the plan accelerates, the angle of attack and climb rate will improve all while maintaining 80 knots indicated. I don't really know how to explain this situation better but I've noticed it regularly and this is why I sooner trust the AOA shortly after takeoff than the ASI to keep me from hitting a departure stall.

But your opinion is just plain wrong. You DON'T know. The POH only gives you a one size fits all stall speed (not custom calculated for your aircraft and your airspeed instrument) for 0, 20, 40, and 60 degrees and only at gross weight. You're gonna tell me that you know exactly what 1.3Vso in a 27 degree bank is? The AOA doesn't just confirm that "the airplane is at the margin of its envelope, low, slow, dirty and banking." It is an analog instrument that moves as this condition is being created. If it is part of your instrument scan (which it should be if you have one and intend to use it) then you will see it go from good to bad to worse as you are increasing bank angle. You won't let yourself get "low, slow, dirty, and banking" because you will be aware when you have reached or begun to dip below 1.3Vso. On the other hand, without it, you have only to guess if you are at the right speed when you tighten up a base to final turn at 2689lbs, flaps wherever they are, and an increasing bank angle. You suggest that the inattentive pilot can get too slow and that further awareness would be useless. Well this can hold true for anything. However, if a pilot can keep track of airspeed in a turn, he can especially keep track of AOA. I don't even other looking at the airspeed during those critical phases. I alternate between looking outside (or my instrument scan in IMC) and looking at my AOA. As far as I'm concerned, at that moment airspeed doesn't matter. I only occasionally cross reference the airspeed when I'm less busy for reference. But on the flipside, I think the attentive pilot is at far greater risk of a base to final turn without AOA information than the pilot who has it. If I begin turning too slow and to steep, I will see the AOA indicator begin to creep toward where I don't want it to be and can correct my turn by dropping the nose further or reducing bank angle. The airspeed flying pilot is simply unaware of the exact 1.3Vso point he should be targeting during an arbitrary bank turn at an arbitrary weight. By not flying the correct angle of attack, you are not only putting yourself at greater risk of stall on departure or arrival, but you are also inhibiting the maximum performance capability of your aircraft which is dangerous as well. Your misunderstanding of angle of attack is not only foolish but also dangerous. Not because you don't want a device but because you don't understand why understanding angle of attack is so imperative. A stall can happen at any speed or attitude but only one angle of attack. With an AOA indicator, you don't have to adjust speeds for weight. You just fly the gauge in the most critical moment. It's when you're climbing hot and heavy out of a short field that you need to squeeze all the performance you can get (not cause you wouldn't make it otherwise but to give yourself more margin if something else goes wrong). But when you're in the process of flying that low airspeed, not only are you at high risk of stall, you are also at risk of reducing your climb rate by straying from it. The AOA not only shows you your margin above stall but also ensures you are climbing in the optimal configuration to get the most climb performance regardless of weight, attitude, or bank angle. You don't even know what your exact weight is. You don't know what your exact bank angle is. You don't know what the 1.3Vso speed at that arbitrary bank angle and weight is. You don't know how much your plane differs from the test model on which the speeds are based. Your airspeed indicator can easily be a few knots off (and on a performance climb even a few knots matters). With an angle of attack indicator none of these things matter because you simply fly the proper angle of attack every time. I'm shocked how difficult it is to understand how brilliantly simple the concept is. As far as I'm concerned, an angle of attack indicator + gps groundspeed is all you need to fly an airplane and ultimately better than airspeed indicator by itself. The AOA is probably less likely to become inop than the ASI as well. It's by far the greatest instrument on my airplane after the six pack. Heck, for strictly VFR only flying, if I could have only a single instrument on board, I'd choose an AOA.

Brett, I think I stated this earlier. I'm sure I had the "book knowledge" and could spit back whatever I heard for the oral. However (especially as a beginner), if I was told something I hadn't tried, it just didn't sink in. There was so much to learn and do. I am really disappointed that I was taught "how to" stall an airplane instead of "how not to stall in the first place" or at least develop understanding of an impending stall. Since I never stalled below a certain speed with me and instructor onboard, it made no sense to me in the plane at that time why it was trying to stall at an otherwise correct speed. I was unable to correlate the book knowledge with the situation because I had never previously seen it in action. The AOA indicator in my Mooney dancing around in turns and such really made me aware of what I had been blind to all that time. I distinctly remember the examiner on my pp glider test telling me that the stall I did was too wimpy and that he wanted me to try it again and let it really stall. What the heck is that teaching us? He should have been thrilled that I was reluctant to get into one and was recovering the moment it began to occur. I keep reading that the FAA agrees and that the FAA lists this as a problem area. But I'm not actually seeing anything being done about it.

In response to lamont337's post on my stall topic, I wonder how many of you have been "promoted" by the faa to install an AOA? Do you have an angle of attack indicator in your Mooney? Do you plan to get one soon? Mine already came with my Mooney and I will say that it is by far the most life-saving "gadget" you can have on board. Statistically those Ipads and such are a wash. On one hand they give you more situational awareness but on the other hand they're a distraction so from a recent course I took I got the impression that they don't necessarily reduce the accident rate. On the flipside, I have resolved near-stall situations multiple times thanks to having an AOA. With my experience I would suggest it as the very next upgrade you do over any other non airworthiness modification you can make.

I don't know about you guys but I feel jipped in all my primary and even recurrent/advanced training particularly when it comes to stalls. I'm not an instructor but I feel like the entire concept of stalls is being taught in a terrible way. Between maybe 7 instructors, I got the same impression of their method for training stalls to be about the same so I'm guessing teaching it this way is standard practice. Furthermore, the way all DPE's test for it is similar to how instructors teach it so it seems like this is the way the entire system wants you to experience stalls. The way it goes is you go up to a high altitude and set yourself up to be straight and level (ha, how would a stall from that orientation ever occur in the first place?), probably tracking a heading. Then the instructor will tell you (after doing clearing turns, not important to the discussion) to set up for a landing configuration and in the process raise the nose to the limit so that the airplane stalls. Then they want you to wait till the stall occurs and the airplane is pointing straight down at the ground and then recover. For a power-on stall, they have you go from straight/level at low power to a full power climb in the most absurd pitch up where you are nearly laying on your back and continue holding that until it stalls and the nose drops. If you "wimp out" and stop pulling back before the stall occurs, they make you do it again and wait till the stall really happens. Yet in all my flying (albeit a mere 800 hours, but enough to observe some consistencies), I cannot recall a single time that I was near stall that ever looked anything like those instructed scenarios. The times I've had the stall horn going off unexpectedly or observed my AOA indicator to show me to be far closer to stall than expected were entirely different! Worst of all, the situations that put me close to stalling were never discussed and I did not figure out what I did wrong until later on. I'd say that I was sooner lucky not having stalled in those circumstances in my ignorant state and that I have learned since. I would not say that my "training" had adequately prepared me to deal with those. The only stalls I was taught to recover from were the ones intentionally created and with the nose pointing at the ground. My first encounters with unforecast stalls were in gliders. I was circling fairly slow (at minimum sink speed) trying to work a thermal. This was ok until I attempted to further steepen up the bank angle. Although I continued to maintain what was considered the appropriate airspeed for the task, the increased angle of attack resultant on an excessively steep bank angle without increase in airspeed caused me to enter an incipient spin. I was plenty high and recovered effortlessly but this had to happen several times until I caught on. I blame this situation on the failure of my glider instructor to teach me that you can induce a stall by increasing bank angle despite maintaining a previously acceptable airspeed. Whenever we practiced steep turns we were already and intentionally set up for a steep turn by flying a higher airspeed. We never practiced flying shallow turns and then changing them into a steep turn. Thus I had never made the connection of progressively increasing airspeed in the turn as you increase the bank angle. This was an extremely valuable lesson I figured out on my own which I will get back to for base/final turns in airplanes. My next memorable near-stall scenario is when I was a freshly minted private pilot (just checked my logbook, 17 hours into it) and I even https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-OXuVJQj8U. The worst thing is that I had NO IDEA what happened at the time and not till I got my Mooney with AOA indicator that I was able to look back on that situation to fully understand what I had done wrong! The fact that I had gone on flying 2 more years until I became full aware of this mistake is appalling. None of my flight instruction adequately prepared me for this very obvious scenario. I had flown the skyhawk only with 1 or 2 on board. Now I was a hotshot PP and wanted to take everyone on a scenic flight of NY. This was my first time filling all the seats. I was meticulous to check the W&B, runway lengths, fuel, etc. What I did not remotely think about or check was the appropriate climb speed. I took off pretty much the same way I always take off and fly the standard Vx/Vy speeds I was always taught to fly: 55/65. You may not hear it in my youtube video but I clearly remember (and on the unedited footage can see/hear it) the stall warning coming on and off. While this was all going on, I could not fathom why the stupid buzzer was going off when I was doing a pretty spiffy job holding 55 like I was taught. When it would go off, luckily I had the sense to lower the nose a little but then like an idiot would pull back into that same near-stall attitude again. It just did not dawn on me then or for another 2 years that the additional weight (and possibly more rearward CG) were causing me to fly at an excessive AOA regardless of my indicated airspeed. What made things even worse was that I was trying to outclimb the hill ahead on that hot August day so. Unaccustomed to flying with the additional weight, I was desperately trying to maintain Vx and was too poorly trained to realize that I was behind the power curve and that putting the nose further down would actually make me climb better! It was a snowballing effect and I was lucky to have enough power and clearance to make it through. I can imagine in a more challenging situation (a certain Mooney pilot comes to mind) causing this to snowball into a full blown departure stall. I continue to harbor some residual shame in that situations and feel that I let my passengers down. Not because I was close to a stall. But because I was clueless of the cause and how I should have dealt with it (and not realizing it for a long time since). I take full responsibility but I blame my ignorance on poor stall instruction that only focused on making actual stalls. Finally my 3rd terrifying near-stall encounter was on a right downwind to base turn on my very first Mooney flight checkout. I was flying a hair on the slow side but within acceptable margins. But as I steepened up the downwind to base turn, the AOA started beeping and the instructor informed me of the situation. I was going pretty fast so I couldn't imagine a stall being possible. But turning too steep with gear/flaps can induce one. I have since watched the AOA in these kinds of turns and realized how quickly your above-stall margin diminishes as you continue to steepen a turn without increasing airspeed. We are always being taught to keep airspeed constant. Yet when you are increasing bank angle in a takeoff/landing configuration, you must increase airspeed by putting the nose down. Now I occasionally take advantage of this sort of situation by using an excessively steep base/final turn to lose altitude on tight patterns if I'm too high. But I first put the nose way down and then turn steeply (while minding the AOA indicator). This kills a ton of altitude very quickly and helps me re-establish a proper glidepath. Before you criticize me for being above glidepath and cramming my pattern, mind you I'm doing this at Linden where we have some very confined airspace with the 5 mile Newark finals overlapping our base leg. I've had a handful more situations but with my trusted AOA in the Mooney, I've been able to solve the situations before they ever played out into a memorable one. With my extended range tanks I am constantly going between flying at vastly differing weight configurations so knowing the exact airspeed based on the fuel/weight configuration at that moment is too complicated. But with the AOA, it always sets me up for flying the safe angle of attack to ensure proper stall margin and minimal airspeed. I can't recommend an AOA enough. At this point I would sooner recommend one than an Ipad, Dynon, or any other popular safety gizmo that is being perpetuated. Ipad may have saved me from busting airspace, AOA saved me from busting my airplane and ass. My humble suggestion for teaching stalls to future generations (and possibly brushing up for already rated pilots) would be to demonstrate near-stall scenarios to the student by an expert instructor. Simply talking about them isn't sufficient (both based on my shared experiences and the statistics). Reading about it and discussing it often don't help the newbie student make the full connection. For me, having experienced these stall scenarios has been a far greater learning experience than any book or discussion. I just wish they were demonstrated to me in training rather than when I ignorantly made them inadvertently. Greater safety would have certainly been assured. An angle of attack indicator is a great tool for showing what happens to the actual AOA in a steep turn or when the plane is heavy. Despite turning at 90kts, the AOA dips quite low. Even without an AOA, expertly putting the plane into situations where the stall warning goes off but without actually stalling would serve a similar illustration. Thus some good examples of things to demonstrate might include: -Doing too steep of a base-final turn (fine do it at altitude simulated so that we're not getting unnecessary accidents during demonstrations). -Throw some extra students in the backseat of that skyhawk and takeoff heavy (demonstrate what an ACTUAL imminent departure stall feels like) -Put a load of ballast in the baggage compartment and show what imminent stalls because of aft CG look like -Demonstrate flap related stalls by turning with full flaps or a departure stall with flaps In none of these demonstrations is at actually necessary to stall the plane and allow the nose to drop. Instead, get the plane there, show the stall horn going off, hand it back to the student and allow them to fix it (practice at altitude). I think the failure of the current stall teaching system is that all it teaches students is how to stall a plane and then how to recover a plane that you intentionally stalled. I don't see any value whatsoever in performing more than a handful of actual stalls just to make the student less panicked should they find themselves in that state. From that point forward, all emphasis should be on pre-stall awareness and pre-stall recovery. Why waste precious flying dollars practicing the actual stall scenario so much when it's not something you ever [should] see in real flying? Thanks for reading and I look forward to your discussion, particularly from instructors.

Well perhaps he's using a Halo headset and you're only using a Lightspeed? Just sayin

Agreed. Guys, I keep coming back to this. Get an AOA indicator! After seeing it creep critically low in some heavyweight or steep turns (with what would appear to be a fair bit of airspeed), I have learned a ton about stall prevention in my aircraft. It has also saved me when climbing out at extensively varying weight conditions from 250-980lbs of payload. Watching the airspeed indicator alone won't save you from stalling cause you don't always know what speed at that weight, flap, or turn condition will cause you to exceed the critical angle of attack. The AOA doesn't care and tells you what your margin from stalling is at whatever condition you are in at the moment. In retrospect my flight instructors did a thoroughly inadequate job preparing me to realize the many other ways to induce a stall because we pretty much only focused on straight power on/off stalls in the same weight configuration!

Interesting post. MP is definitely TRICKY! Cause it's not an absolute figure. It's coming down as you're climbing so unless it's like below 20" and below 10'000ft, you wouldn't immediately link it to the throttle. RPM is far more obvious. I've had similar bad climb situations where I didn't connect the fact that the gear was still down. Both times it happened was when the emergency gear extension mechanism came unlatched pretakeoff (this is a terrible thing cause it's not something that usually happens in preflight but rather during boarding so really the best practice is for this to be a pretakeoff check item!!!!) and the gear remained down despite hitting the handle up. I usually don't bother looking for the transition light and gear light to go out. I'd much rather focus on the departure, traffic, obstacles, and emergency options (no time to diagnose/fix the problem at that moment even if I were aware the gear didn't retract). One time this was the result of forgetting to retract the flaps because of an abnormal departure. We are good at handling things using SOP but when something goes different, it is a bit scary how unaware and incapable we become. I guess the main solution to your original issue is to be vigilant about using the friction lock and to diagnose obvious problems before speculating on malfunctions. Since I fly LOP a lot your situation would have probably triggered me to check the mixture first and in the process of checking that I'd probably notice the throttle. So yeah, when power is insufficient, check your powerplant controls before checking the gauges. Then gauges. Then gear and flaps. Let's see what others say.

How about you take the course and let us know Been wondering the same thing.

That's cause the 150kt wind moving over the wings is absolutely steady (cause the air isn't moving, just the plane is). Also when you are up high, it's not a big deal when you get tossed around a few dozens or hundred feet. Near the ground that could be life and death. On top of that, wind shear and gusts are much more prevalent near the ground where obstacles shift the wind direction.

What's the biggest wind that you have taken off or landed in? Was it intentional or winds picked up and your only landing option? What's the biggest direct crosswind you've handled in a Mooney? That said, what are your max overall and crosswinds that you will choose to set out in?

That sounds like something that could only happen in a cartoon!

Because your excessive confidence and comfort has been leading you to do extremely stupid things! Maybe that's the part you should be re-evaluating?

You don't need more training, you need to get your head out of your ass! You're playing with fire. The last few stories I read about someone going VFR into IMC, the outcome listed fatalities! You don't need more training. If you got a private pilot certificate just recently, you have received all the training you need to safely fly VFR. Attitude is a whole other story. No amount of instruction and training will solve that. You don't need someone to teach you how to fly in the clouds. You need to stop being an idiot and not putting yourself there in the first place. And you shouldn't be taking anyone up flying with you until you can get 50-100 hours of trouble free flight and be confident with yourself to be able to take them with 100% safety. To drag others through your situation is completely unacceptable. As a next to zero time pilot, you have to set some BIG safety margins for yourself. Minimums aren't meant for you. They are meant for guys with lots of experience who are certain they can operate at those minimums. You have to set your own minimums and better on the conservative side until you learn what your lower limits can safely be. Most sane VFR pilots with a healthy fear of IMC turn around when they begin to encounter it. You decided to break the rules, press on, and put everyone at risk of DEATH. Either quit flying while you're still ahead or fix your attitude and give it the seriousness that it so strongly requires. *All that said with your safety and the preservation of GA in mind.

I think we're way past that point. Time to bring in the politics.