Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Hi tdracer
Strange to engineer a system that way. You have hydraulic power, you have FBW, why make the controls hard to hold accurately? - just design the FBW to protect the aircraft without making it hard to fly.
I personally find it awkward to hold significant force on a yoke and accurately control pitch, and have to trim as well - with just one hand. I would want to get both hands onto the yoke, hence my earlier questions.
My bolds
The yoke forces on the 777 are intended to mimic what you'd feel in an old fashioned cable controlled aircraft (the 787 is similar). As you pull into a stall, the yoke force need to keep pulling into the stall increases rather dramatically. This gives very strong, tactile feedback of what you and the aircraft are doing - and it's required by the regs (I assume Airbus managed to get an exemption to those regs since in Normal law you can't go there - of course in Direct law you can, as was demonstrated so dramatically and tragically on AF 447).
This requirement was also the genesis of MCAS, since on the 737 MAX those big engines negate the increase in stick force required to pull into a stall.
That the ASIANA pilot didn't know or recognize that having to pull back so hard meant something was very seriously wrong is a big black mark against the AB to Boeing training he received.