Great article Dudley, thanks for sharing. That's exactly what I was trying to say. I know I feel like the turning point in my career, when I really became a pilot, was when I went to work for my mentor, and learned acro and got into some old airplanes. What you detailed is exactly where I think we'd ideally go: to a training standard that emphasizes aircraft feel, an intuitive understanding of how your wing is performing in any state of energy or load. But...
If you need an instrument to tell you your angle of attack in these kind of airplanes, you shouldn't be flying.
That sounds great, but it's probably not realistic. The ideal pilot would have the instinctive feel we're talking about, but can every pilot be the "ideal" pilot? In reality, when you examine a group of people who do any common activity, you find that some perform above average, some are below average, and most are by definition... average. So, the above average pilots have this instinctive feel, maybe the average pilots have it to a lesser extent, and maybe the below average folks have it even less or not at all. It's just not realistic to think that every pilot can or will invest the time and money into the necessary amount of training to reach that level, and maybe some aren't capable of reaching it at all. Is leaving them behind, as threats to themselves and their passengers, the best option? I mean, they're licensed pilots. They're GOING to fly.
This is where AoA gauges come in. I've never even gotten to use one in a GA plane, but I think they're one of the best safety enhancements GA has ever seen. They dumb all this "instinctive feel" mumbo jumbo down into a simple, color coded picture that's always in your peripheral vision and is always telling you exactly what your wing is doing, in real time. ANYONE can maintain a safe energy state in every condition with one of these, and referencing it during training maneuvers is going to help a pilot of any level reach that instinctive feel even quicker. There's no downside to these things at all.
Something else I thought of that bugs me about the original video's "defined maneuvering speed" is that he's advocating conditioning pilots to fly a speed that seems 10-15kts above L/D max, after an engine failure. The amount of potential glide distance sacrificed is obviously dependent on aircraft and altitude... but is this a great idea?