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Old 14th Jun 2009, 21:52
  #1522 (permalink)  
JD-EE
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
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Pontius, I think you misunderstand me.

I am envisioning a joystick that is simply sitting up in the air. Pick one for your favorite game. Hold the base. Now move it rapidly left and right. What is the effect as read on your computer screen? Does it stay put? Does it move as if somebody had their hand on the stick and was exerting control?

Experience suggests you will find that your computer gets input that it does not distinguish from that you might have given yourself. Heck, you can see the stick flopping around.

Now imagine it runs your automobile. Forward means go forward, the further forward the faster. And so forth. Now suppose you hit an obstacle, a speed bump. Your body jerks forward. Your car lurches forward into a crash. This is not a problem if you're sitting comfortably with no sudden accelerations over a small fraction of a G. But add in jerks from turbulence and you might find your arm involuntarily inputting a control surface change that was out of the range the plane could tolerate.

Meanwhile, what are your feet doing as you bounce six inches up and down? Might such a bounce have led to the pilot overcontrolling in several of the accidents attributed to "stupid pilot over controlled the plane?"

(Maybe a high-G accelerometer set needs to be mounted in the cockpit so that the data recorders can note that it's not the pilot's fault he could not control the plane, nothing could.)
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