Originally Posted by
RR_NDB
Introduced more than FBW: a new control philosophy.
Nothing wrong with that
per se. Anyone used to driving a modern car would be completely at a loss trying to drive a Ford Model T. Also, the sidestick control method had been in use in military jets for some time before the A320 went into service, so it's not like they were springing a complete unknown into the pilot community.
A test 787 (ZA001) was hit by a lightning bolt and survived. (landed). During the Test phase or Certification process, the airliners are "lightning tested"?
I don't think so, but the laws of probability suggest that many a FBW Airbus model has been struck by lightning in one form or another in their 23 years of airline service and not one has fallen from the sky because of it.
An a/c after an UAS issue being hit in itīs nose section by a "very intense current" (thousands of amps), facing severe turbulence (with the crew in a "dark" cockpit, interior lights dim*) can become "faulty"? Or, What can cause "multiple failures" in a "redundant computer system"?
I don't know, and neither does anyone else - which is why I'm waiting for the report to come out. At this point we don't even know if the computer system had anything to do with the loss of the aircraft, so we're into heavy speculation by even bringing it up!
And the 80186 used in the A320 is of similar vintage, so why consider one to be more suspect than the other?
(Nerdy aside : I know that the 68k series was much more friendly to program at assembler level than the 8086 series, but that's not really relevant here...)
Originally Posted by
gums
If the small stick has a good "load" to it that requires greater and greater pounds of pressure along the way, then could be a player.
IIRC the Airbus FBW stick does so via a simple spring mechanism.
I fly the online sim Warbirds and use a simple stick that is very stiff. The gimpy ones that move a lot and move easily are harder to use for fine corrections.
As a flight-obsessed kid I used to play F/A-18 Interceptor on my old Amiga 500* with a digital joystick (either rate was commanded or it wasn't). Lots of fun, but I'm unsure of the relevance. As an aside, that 23-year-old piece of entertainment software had the best sound FX of any sim I've used since...
* - Hence why I know about the 68k