Hi Titanic3,
Read through all the posts, however I have a point of view that I haven't yet seen mentioned. When we talk about plane stalling, I'm actually going to focus on the wing, rather than the plane.
Your hand holds the control stick, which is attached to the elevator.
The elevator is what sets the wing angle of attack. I.e. pull up on the stick, elevator pushes the tail down so the nose goes up.
Your wing stalls when your wing angle of attack exceeds its maximum angle.
So if you want to know 'how do pilots know the plane is going to stall', you just need to know:
How far to pull the stick back
You wing will stall at the same angle, whether you are going slow or fast. You can pull the stick back in your hands until the same point with and then the wing will stall.
You don't need an airspeed indicator, you don't need a buzzer, you don't need an AOA meter. Just remember 'about there' and never be tempted to pull past it, unless you deliberately want to stall the wing.
Usually, you will feel a tremor, just before you pull the stick back to 'that point'. This depends on aircraft design of the wing. Compare stalling characteristics of WW2 fighters such as the Spitfire to a FW190.
In tight turns or vertical manouvers such as loops, there is a temptation to try to pull the aircraft through that little bit faster the maneuvers, but if you are at maximum angle of attack, you cant do much more, pull the stick back further and you will just stall. You have that stick in your hands, as long as you don't pull it past maximum AOA point, you wont stall the wing. It just requires discipline to know that you set the position of the stick.
It is hard to compare real life to a computer simulation, because our joysticks don't model control forces. Above around 200MPH, the forces in real life, depending on trim, could physically stop you pulling the stick back enough to hit the wing maximum AOA. You only have so much muscle on your arm and that connected via the stick to the elevator and all the air moving over it.
Obviously, in a computer simulation, at 400 MPH, you can still move your computer joystick all the way back. Sims such as AH, ignore the position of your computer joystick as wishful thinking, because in real life, unless you had the right trim set, there is no way you would have enough muscle to pull the still right back at 500mph in real life.
So for the purposes of Aces High simulation, below 200MPH, find the angle on your computer joystick where the aircraft stalls. As long as you don't pull past that angle, you wont stall the wing.
In Aces High above 200 MPH, it is harder to learn if the angle of your computer joystick is being represented by the same angle of the elevator up the back. If only we could have a computer force feedback mechanism strong enough... that would require some serious hydraulics and we might tear the top of the desk trying to pull up an un-trimmed aircraft up at 400 MPH in desperation!
Just remember, that there is a maximum angle of attack for a wing and as long as you don't try to exceed that angle, you wont stall.
