How does one fly a fighter at a high angle of attack? I know what it means, just don't know how to do it.

I've d/l the avro arrow, and the readme file recommends this on landing.

Flying at high AOA's requires the pilot to find a balance between lift and drag.  The higher you make the AOA using pitch commands, the more you increase the lift.  But in doing so you also create more overall drag on the aircraft, induced drag from the production of lift and just more overall drag from the aircraft itself as you expose more of it's "body" to the relative wind of the airstream.  So to fly at a high AOA you must balance the larger AOA with more thrust.  

Try this.  All student pilots from Cessna's to fighters are taught to perform slow flight.  To do this begin by reducing the power to idle.  As the speed slows the aircraft will want to descend.  Resist the descent by ever so slightly increasing the pitch.  Continue to very slowly increase the pitch to fight the descent. Eventually at the slower speeds you will need to re-introduce power to maintain your altitude.

Just keep adding power in very small incriments to fight the descent while increasing the pitch to fight the descent as well as control the speed.  Once the aircraft is in true slow flight your pitch angle wil control your airspeed while your power will control your altitude.

Here are a couple of shots (Moderators:  not sure if this is allowed in this forum but it helps the disscussion) of Kirk Olsson's Viper transitioning to high AOA/slow flight.

First:  Straight and level with power at idle.

Next:  First segment of flaps 150 kts.  Pitch is about 12-15 degrees and power just above idle.  To get down to this speed initially you have to use the speed brakes.  Jets don't like to slow down.

Next:  Full flaps 100 kts.  Pitch is about 17-20 degrees nose up, power at about 25%.

Finally:  Full flaps and gear 110 kts.  Just about the same pitch as without the gear and just a little more power to hold level flight.


Kirk's Viper is the only fighter that I can do this with.  The others just won't cooperate so I don't know how well it can be done with the Avro.

So practice this and then translate it to the landing where you should get something like this.  

A nice stabilized approach at about 130 knots or so for the F-16 with an appropriate rate of descent for landing.



Just hold it all the way to the ground with just a little flare at the very end.


Good luck.

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Yea that's one area where they (Microsoft) could do some work to make it better.