AOA Toierance

Sorry if I'm asking something that's in the manual, I did search but I couldn't find this info...

I know we need to shoot for AOA of exactly 15 degrees for an F-14 carrier landing, but how far off that can you be and still land safely? For instance, would 14.5 to 15.5? The current system seems generous, but if it's accurate I'd love to know.

Thanks all

H

its in units not degrees, 15 units is perfect but tbh its very forgiving imo

its in units not degrees, 15 units is perfect but tbh its very forgiving imo

Thanks for the info, especially AOA being units, I might never have found out otherwise!

All US military aircraft used units instead of degrees up until the FBW planes started coming out and, as far as I know, there is no standard definition of a unit.

All US military aircraft used units instead of degrees up until the FBW planes started coming out and, as far as I know, there is no standard definition of a unit.

Understood, thanks for that background. Interesting to note these small differences between airframes of different ages

Altering the AOA too far away from nominal will have a pretty big impact on what wire you catch, or if you even grab one at all, as the meatball is based on your head position relative to the hook at a set aircraft AOA.

You could have a perfect meatball approach and touchdown but grab a 1 or 4 wire due to an incorrect AOA.

Altering the AOA too far away from nominal will have a pretty big impact on what wire you catch, or if you even grab one at all, as the meatball is based on your head position relative to the hook at a set aircraft AOA.

 

You could have a perfect meatball approach and touchdown but grab a 1 or 4 wire due to an incorrect AOA.

Thank you, that explains it. Would you hazard a guess how far off you’d need to be to catch a 4? EDIT: Never mind, realized it would depend on glideslope too

Just got my F-14B after a free trial. Really appreciate the quality of this product.

Sorry for using this topic for my question, but since it’s all about AOA, please let me ask.

According to the manual : “ Tape indicating angle of attack (AOA) on a scale of 0 to 30 units. (Equivalent to -10° to +40° rotation of the AoA probe.)“

So 50 degrees of total AOA probe range corespondents to 30units of AOA tape. Which makes around 1 unit=1,67 degrees.

According to this proportion 15units= -10 + (15*1,67)= -10+25=15 degrees of AOA, but in fact in window of external view (F2) we can see AOA= 10.

Basically we don’t know what does AOA shows to us. Is it a AOA of the longitude axis of an airplane, or it’s AOA of a airfoil chord (which is more likely).

When the F14 is on the ground with the pitch of “0” AOA is 0.7 degrees (on the external view). This probably means that wing to fuselage attachment angle is about +0.7.

If the proportion above is correct we might think that AOA tape supposed to show us indication of around 6.4. But in fact we can see only 4.5 instead.

So that proportion isn’t correct for both cases.

So how does it work in reality? Is this proportion linear? And what is the “zero” position of probe to fuselage attachment? Or what I’m missing?

For example F15 on the runway shows pitch of 0 degrees and AOA =0 (in external view window F2). AOA tape shows 10units, (whole range from 0 to 40) which make me think that it’s kinda the same system but with proportion 1unit =1degree of AOA. And range 0 to 40 units= -10 to +30 degrees of AOA.