"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
In article ,
If a student believes the tailplane stalls at the stall break, and
that's what causes the nose to pitch down, it's not going to kill
them. It's wrong, but it's an esoteric wrong and people don't get
killed by esoteric wrongs.

Roy, I agree with your general point. Much of the detail about how lift and
stalls work is of interest to engineers and physicists, but not to pilots as
such. And I agree that it's useful to present student pilots with as simple
a model as possible that supports the right conclusions about how to fly.
(Students who happen to be curious can learn more complex, more accurate
models.)

Still, I think it's useful to include a bit more information than the points
you enumerated. In particular, some reference to the Bernoulli aspect of
lift, and the separation of the boundary layer during a stall, helps make
clear why the condition of the upper wing surface is important (and why a
thin layer of frost on the upper surface can make it dangerous to take off,
for example).

Similarly, Jim's false model of stalls has some ramifications that are of
interest to pilots. In particular, if Jim's model were correct, then pilots
would have no reason to consider tail stalls more worrisome than normal
stalls (because normal stalls would *be* tail stalls). But Jim's model is
wrong, and a student who took it seriously could get into trouble. That
probably wouldn't happen (because a student who could figure out that
ramification could probably also figure out what's wrong with Jim's
explanation), but it's still an unnecessary risk.

--Gary