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Old 1st Oct 2007, 16:33
  #2597 (permalink)  
ChristiaanJ
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Originally Posted by DozyWannabe
... manual or analogue automatic control will one day be a thing of the past.
From that remark, it seems to me that you, and a few others, are under the mistaken impression that there are fundamental differences between analogue and digital flight control systems.

In reality, the good old analogue systems did exactly the same things and used exactly the same logic, interlocks and other features as the digital systems.

"Seen" from the outside (functionally), there is no way to tell if a given system is analogue or digital.

There are very good reasons why analogue systems are fading into the mist of time, the main ones being the volume, weight and complexity of the hardware, and the fact that any modification or upgrade becomes a matter of hardware mods, rather than software.

If anybody wanted to, the control laws and logic of the A320 AFCS could be duplicated exactly using analogue and discrete-logic technology.
Not that anybody in his right mind would try, given the reasons above.

And yes, we had WOW logic into the system on Concorde....
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