[Lowest common denominator/teach to test] is a poor and all to often accepted excuse to teach something incorrectly. Why not teach it correctly with the caveat that giving too much detail to the examiner can be a slippery slope. Then the CFI applicate has ideas that properly link together and can choose how detailed to make his or her example. This is invariably better than fragmented ideas aimed to teach to the stupidest...erm lowest common denominator...level.
I would never excuse teaching anything
incorrectly, and that's a large part of my retort—teaching someone
incompletely may sound bad, but in the end an intuitive understanding based on incomplete (but fundamentally correct) instruction is often better than an analytical knowledge base with no intuitive ability to apply it.
Yes, but you never said it. Two paragraphs to say zero lift AOA is the angle which an airfoil produces no lift. If the student ever got curious they could google zero lift AOA and find tons of information. Reading your reply what should they google? No gravity with atmosphere AOA?
Gravity is a confounding factor, albeit the one airplanes were designed to overcome. ^.^
But it's so wholly misunderstood by so many that it's sometimes better to assume a spherical universe in a vacuum for the purposes of making a point... to me, it's implied that if, without gravity, the lift required for level flight (symmetrical airfoil) occurs at zero degrees AoA .. then clearly that's the zero-lift AoA.
I put it there to show you that mentioning CG's arm effects on rudder is an unnecessary addition. It's effects are negligible and worth mentioning only to mention that they are negligible.
I don't know if I'd call them negligible in, say, an aft-of-CG Vmc scenario. Perhaps if I knew the equation, I could solve for the actual effect ... but if I -need- to do that, I can always look it up.
True if you're not doing tail wheel or acro GP is relatively non existent.
Considering my preferences, I'm fond of teaching it ... but only when appropriate. I think effects of that nature should be taught from most to least significance.
However, you describe p-factor in terms of head wind and tail wind.
... Bearing in mind that most of my goal is to get the OP to read the PHAK, where these things are detailed with graphs and such. :>
>snip<
Heaviest and slow. Exactly. Slats decrease AOA and flaps increase it. Speeds relatively the same at landing as climb (yes not identical). However, weight is dramatically lower after a long haul in a big bird. That's your difference, and that's what matters. Being in a climb and being clean configuration are irrelevant and unnecessary additions.
Now here's where perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. The way I understand it, flaps increase the -effective- AoA of a segment of airfoil, allowing the same lift production at a lower overall angle of attack, and also effectively increasing drag by the same mechanism.
... you're selling yourself short by saying algebra has no place in the airplane. Sure, not in the plane.
Well... ? :>
What about for a simple 3 or 4 variable formula to explain the analytical side?
If the student is an engineer by trade—and in particular, an engineer who has become accustomed to developing understanding through mathematical relationship—I will happily dig out formulae to explain various phenomena.
I mean it's math the chinese learn in 5th and 6th grade.
Is that why they're renowned as exceptional aviators and aviation students? ~.^
(I think China is doing almost everything -wrong- in an elevation-of-the-species sense, but we can table that discussion for another time if you like.)
Surely we can expect a high school or college graduate to be able to comprehend it in it's simplest forms.
I am neither. (That doesn't mean I don't understand it, but while I feel that graphs are sometimes useful for the purposes of illustrating relationships, the equations used to create them are superfluous)
I don't need to know ρ, nor what a slug is, nor how many furlongs per fortnight I'm traveling to know that:
A> Air is a fluid
B> Air has weight
The things that are less intuitive are questions like "Why is humid air less dense than dry air", until you look at the molecular weights. For those sorts of questions, that explanation alone is usually sufficient, and, as I prefer to say, "there's plenty of information out there, and it's left as an exercise for the reader."
Keep in mind, to make your AOA discussion mean something you need to start with the desire to seek equilibrium between the four forces. Specifically that lift equals drag. All analysis should revolve around this concept, leave the instantaneous analysis' for a later discussion.
I know what you're saying, but that reads funny. But yes, that's how I teach it.
I stick this last because it is the most important part. And trust me when I say I speak imprecisely all the time. That said, when dealing with this topic it should be our aim to speak as precisely as possible.
Absolutely.
-Fox
