PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - AF 447 Thread no. 4
View Single Post
Old 7th Jul 2011, 18:57
  #955 (permalink)  
EMIT
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Netherlands
Age: 67
Posts: 288
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
PJ 2 #944

In F-16, no feedback from one sidestick to the other.
Even more, in the F-16 the sidestick cannot be moved like in the Airbus. The signal is the FORCE that is exerted on the stick, not the angular displacement.
In the original, F-16 the stick was really as rock solid as an iron pipe, it turned out that that configuration was not so nice for finer control, so a little bit of play was built into the versions from Block-10 onwards (maybe 2 or 3 millimeters of movement at the top of the stick).
Philosophy for the non-moving stick is as follows: there is a "perfect" relaxed steering attitude for your hand, the stick is built in that attitude. If the stick had to be displaced angularly for generating steering signals, that would mean rotating your hand out of the perfect steering attitude - would be a painful exercise under a 9 g load.
In the Rafale, the French originally built a sidestick akin to the Airbus setup. It took some rough remarks from an F-16 pilot to get the factory to switch to an F-16 type stick, after that the Rafale was a fine flying machine.
Info on what the other guy is doing comes from aircraft response. No such thing as "Dual Input" calls as in Airbus. Does it always work out fine that way? No, there has been a case in F-16 history when a non F-16 rated backseater kept his feet well away from the rudder pedals; unfortunately that brought his knees very close to his sidestick. When his G-suit inflated during a dive pull-out, the expanding suit pushed the sidestick sidewards, unexplained sudden roll, didn't work out well.

Autothrust in a fighter, no, everything is done manually. Exception, I believe, Saab Viggen, for landings on short runway strips.

Angle of Attack indicators in fighters? YES.
And, yes, they are actively used.

AOA in civil airplanes - unfortunately, mostly in disguised form: the red minimum speed indication on the speed tape is actually AOA driven, ever notice how it moves up as you increase g-load? (OK, that is observed mostly in the SIM, e.g. during unusual attitude recoveries). Too bad, that when the speed tape is taken away because of system errors, you also loose your disguised AOA indication.
So yes, I would like an AOA indicator in civvie aircraft.
EMIT is offline