Originally Posted by
gums
The engineers did a great job on the Viper, but that same team did not work on the Airbus.
Well, to be fair it's a completely different design consideration :
Originally Posted by
DozyWannabe
The implementation of FBW on the F-16 was intended to solve a very different problem than that of the A320 series. The F-16 was one of the most maneouverable fighters of it's day, but the way General Dynamics achieved that was by having an aerodynamically unstable airframe that *required* constant computer correction to keep her airborne and going in a straight line. The A320 was designed to be as aerodynamically stable as any other airliner, but the FBW was simply designed to assist the pilot by easing the workload when it came to actually controlling the thing, as well as provide safety features as backstops when things got hairy.
Going from memory here, so please correct me if so, but as I understood it the F/A-18 was more of a hybrid of the advanced setup in the F-16 and more traditional control methodolgies - in a not dissimilar way to how FBW is implemented in the B777 vs the A32/3/4/80 series.