Originally Posted by
aterpster
Gordie could have been responsible for the light (15 pounds) of forward pressure on the control column to kick the autoflight from command to CWS. But, Lockheed took the hit on the EAL swamp crash because of the lack of an audible warning. (Where were the FAA cert folks on that one?)
If I recall correctly, it wasn't that it was 15lbs pressure so much as they'd calibrated the RHS yoke to 15lbs and the LHS yoke to 20lbs. What made it more insidious was that when the computers were mismatched in this way, the LHS "ALT HOLD" annunciator would go out when 15lbs pressure was applied, but the RHS one would not.
There was an audible warning that the aircraft was departing from assigned altitude, but it only went off at the FE's station and unfortunately the FE at the time was in the nose-wheel bay trying to check the indices.