Hello to all,
Whilst grounded due to a total lack of funds
, I've been turning my attentions increasingly to flight sims. I hope I'm not in the wrong forum, but I'm not asking for help on the sim part, rather in understanding the display of the real instrument.
So, I'm trying to replicate the Attitude Indicator from an EE Lightning F6. This unit is described in AP101B-1003 as 'Attitude Indicator F4C'
I've grasped the principle of the roller-blind display, so have a good representation of the horizon moving up and down and rotating. That was very straightforward to do as it is easily facilitated in XML.
Where I am stuck is with what I'll describe as the moving 'dot'.
As I understand it looking at pictures of the instrument it was a dot held over the blind by wires. I've read the abstract from the Kelvin & Hughes patent but can't quite grasp what the pilot would have actually seen on the display in flight.
I understand the dot was to indicate roll/pitch whilst the aircraft was at very high positive or negative angles of pitch and therefore presumably the horizon display would have appeared all white or all black.
I also understand it was constrained to horizontal and vertical motions (i.e. there was no rotational element to the movement).
I guess what I'm asking is what did the pilot actually see as the aircraft pitched from say horizontal through to 90 degrees vertical?
I think I understand how roll angle was indicated by the 'dot', for example, if the aircraft's right wing was down 20 degrees the dot moved to the left to the 20 degree ring on the display. I don't know though if this was a constant display at all flight attitudes or if it only came into action after the horizon disappeared from the display? Or even if I have understood it fully or at all!
I hope someone can explain it to me
Once I have this sorted I'm hoping to move on to doing the TACAN/ILS/NAV display, so no doubt I'll have more questions on those to come.
