{"id":13597,"date":"2016-12-06T12:55:21","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T11:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dg-flugzeugbau.de\/en\/?page_id=13597"},"modified":"2016-12-06T12:55:21","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T11:55:21","slug":"stall-warning-indicator","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.dg-aviation.de\/en\/library\/stall-warning-indicator","title":{"rendered":"Stall Warning Indicator"},"content":{"rendered":"

A call for new ideas on an old theme!<\/h2>\n

The sad impulse to write this article is two accidents within one week on my \u0093home drome\u0094, Oerlinghausen.\u00a0 A student declared from a good height that he was ending his flight.\u00a0 He landed very hard and suffered a back injury.\u00a0 The glider was heavily damaged.
\nAn older pilot with 40 years (!) of flying experience returned fairly close to the field but flying very slowly.\u00a0 He stalled at about 100 feet and dove into trees.\u00a0 He died two days later in hospital.
\nIt is discouraging and sometimes I ask myself seriously what I’m doing building gliders.\u00a0 Nevertheless, these accidents have brought me to thinking about a very simple question:
\nEvery simple Cessna and the like have a stall warning system.\u00a0 We have none.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 More exactly, why do many pilots think a stall warning device is \u0093unfashionable\u0094 and don’t want one?
\nEveryone knows that among all of the causes of accidents, \u0093stalling near the ground\u0094 is the most common and often ends in death.\u00a0 A complete avoidance of such accidents is, of course, impossible.\u00a0 But the question must be asked, in any case, whether an obligatory stall warning system would drastically reduce their number.
\nThis kind of accident occurs under many different conditions:
\nLanding, winch launching, aerotowing, in mountains without a good view of a horizon, and after entering bad weather.
\nThis question is not new and I have often discussed it with pilots.\u00a0 I’ve heard many arguments and have learned a lot.\u00a0 In addition, I asked the question on “rec.aviation.soaring” and received a wide range of responses.
\nIn all questions of safety in gliding, a manufacturer must think carefully about the answers.\u00a0 If we were to put stall warning indicators on all of our gliders as standard equipment, pilots would say, \u0093The wings from DG are trash.\u00a0 That\u00a0 is seen by the fact that they must put stall warning indicators on all of their ships.\u00a0 Other designs don’t need them.\u0094\u00a0 I’ve heard this point of view many times and it brings me to the dark suspicion that this is the reason why manufacturers have not to this day put in stall warning indicators as standard equipment.
\nLet’s start at the beginning with the aerodynamic root of the problem in flight physics.
\nAn aircraft flying fast has a lower efficiency than a slower flying aircraft.\u00a0 If you want to glide as far as possible from a given height, use the best glide speed which is about 57 knots for a modern glider.\u00a0 If you want to minimize sink then fly at the minimum sink speed of about 44 to 49 knots depending on wing loading.\u00a0 If you reduce the speed even more, by flying at a still higher angle of attack, the flow across the wings will suddenly break up.\u00a0 The drag increases markedly and the thrust due to weight diminishes.\u00a0 One or both wings stall.\u00a0 If only one wing stalls, then the aircraft enters a spin.
\nA stall warning indicator should give warning at a speed of about 5 to 10% over the stall speed,\u00a0 in order to give the pilot time to push forward on the stick and increase speed before the aircraft becomes uncontrollable.\u00a0 Such a warning should drastically reduce accidents caused by flying too slowly, in normal landings especially outlandings, and also in mountain flying.<\/p>\n

What is the situation in gliders?<\/h3>\n

Why don’t they have stall warning devices?<\/p>\n