Originally Posted by PJ2
From my recurrent training and experience in the A330 Level D sim, roll oscillations weren't difficult to control even if one kept at it (waggling the stick) for a period of time instead of freezing the stick/wheel and making one opposing input, (as Davies suggested in HtBJ) to halt the pattern.
Such side-to-side action (there is a graph on one of the threads showing the exact input/pathway of the stick), on the stick does not lead to a pitch-up although a change in pitch attitude may incidently occur and if so it, pitch, is very controllable.
The airplane is sensitive but not that sensitive so as to lose control either in pitch or roll. Such "inadvertent" inputs are not, and were not "dramatic". They lead neither easily nor rapidly to a continuous pitch up to the stall nor would such sensitivities keep it there, at a 16deg pitch attitude.
That there was PIO there is little doubt but it is efficiently controllable and does not lead to a loss of control without other factors intervening in pilot awareness and recovery efforts. Up until the continuous NU inputs and the rapid loss of energy and perhaps even near the apogee, the data does not indicate a complete (irrecoverable) loss of control.
I was just thumbing through my copy of "Aviation Safety and Pilot Control" by the National Research Council. There were an interesting couple of paragraphs that I will quote:
Originally Posted by Aviation Safety And Pilot Control
Pilot-in-the-Loop, Moving-Base and In-Flight Simulation
Historical Perspectives.
Because moving-base simulators have the capability of emulating motion, at least to a limited extent, they would appear to be more powerful tools for assessing APC susceptibility than fixed-base
simulators. However, the utility of these devices has also been called into question. Figure 5-1 compares a group of four simulators used in NASA's investigation of the Shuttle PIO incident alluded to earlier. 59 The Flight Simulator for Advanced Aircraft was a moving-base simulator (no longer in existence) capable of large lateral translations. The Vertical Motion Simulator is capable of large vertical translations. The Total In-Flight Simulator is a highly modified C-131 transport. In the Shuttle APC investigation, PIO susceptibility ratings (using the PIO rating scale shown in Figure 5-2) were obtained on the moving-base and in-flight simulators for various tasks (see Figures 5-3, 5-4, and 5-5). With its ability to provide high fidelity visual and motion cues, the Total In-Flight Simulator provided PIO ratings that more closely reflected those of the actual Shuttle vehicle in normal landings, with and without lateral offsets. By artificially increasing the task difficulty, the moving-base simulators exhibited some improvement in predicting APCs.
A general conclusion about these simulators is that, once an APC tendency has been observed in flight, it is possible to construct a piloting task that will exhibit the same tendencies in ground-based simulation. In addition,as simulator fidelity increases (e.g., moving versus fixed-base, in-flight versus ground-based), APC tendencies noted in flight can be reproduced with piloting tasks that are more realistic. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as simulated piloting tasks become more realistic, simulation results are more likely to influence the program personnel responsible for allocating resources to investigate and alleviate potential APC problems.
Time marches on and technology improves, but I suspect that the ability of simulators to reliably simulate PIO characteristics still lags.
