If the THS does NOT "chase the Elevators all day", the pilot ends up flying a very different a/c dependent totally on the THS' position. Auto trim seems such a fine add, but it can certainly wreak havoc. How is the pilot made aware of this critical control position? Without knowledge of control surface deflection, what does he know, and when does he know it?
Not only that, but accustomed as he is to consistent Pitch authority (completely supplied by the FCS) what is his response when the elevators get abandoned by the "Big Dog" and have to fend for themselves? A benign and docile handling Beast turns into a marginally controllable leviathan at best (cruise?) to an out of control house of cards in completely new and different attitudes. Absent some bizarre and totally unknown controls configuration that required back stick whilst Stalled, my money is on the crew believing wholeheartedly they were NoseDown, oversped, and unrecoverable, all the way down. No FD, no horizon, and gobs of airstream noise. At 10k feet, did PNF notice they were NU instead, and instinctively push ND? (Perhaps having seen the Ocean, or even an horizon?)
This thread has a most definite Phugoid of its own. The rhetoric is fascinating and arcane on the way up, and then the fundamentals rear back, and the entire thread changes heading.
The pilots' reputation will have to live or die on the use/nonuse/misuse of the Trim Wheel, perhaps. In their defense, it is blatantly obvious that not even the 'experts' here are comfortable with the Bus and its iterations in these upset conditions.
In pocketing the argument in narrow ways, the solution is impossible. This was a TEAM effort, without doubt. I for one will admit that.
Malfunction, Training, or Act of God, nothing new under the Sun.
For Garage Years. You assume ALT LAW 1 in the entirety of upset? A question, then. After she Stalled, wouldn't the a/c be in Direct, or Mechanical? And if an automatic degrade, what informs the flying pilot?
Honest question.
Last edited by bearfoil; 8th Jul 2011 at 16:30.