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Old 11th Jan 2013, 14:36
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ORAC
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
 
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So I still don't know how they got roll stability.
Wiki: The V-1 guidance system used a simple autopilot to regulate altitude and airspeed, developed by Askania in Berlin.[6] (The RLM at first planned to use a radio-control system with the V-1 for precision attacks, but the government decided to instead use the missile against London.[10]) A weighted pendulum system provided fore-and-aft attitude measurement to control pitch (damped by a gyrocompass, which it also stabilized). Operating power for the gyroscope platform and the flight control actuators was provided by two large spherical compressed air tanks which also pressurized the fuel tank. These air tanks were charged to 150 atm (15,000 kPa) before launch. With the counter determining how far the missile would fly, it was only necessary to launch the V-1 with the ramp pointing in the approximate direction, and the autopilot controlled the flight.

There was a more sophisticated interaction between yaw, roll, and other sensors: a gyrocompass (set by swinging in a hangar before launch) gave feedback to control the dynamics of pitch and roll, but it was angled away from the horizontal so that controlling these degrees of freedom interacted: the gyroscope remained true on the basis of feedback received from a magnetic compass[citation needed], and from the fore and aft pendulum. This interaction meant that rudder control was sufficient for steering and no banking mechanism was needed.

Greyfalcon: The little aircraft's wings had no control surfaces. The V-1 was directed by the rudder and elevators on its horizontal tailplane. As there was no way the flying bomb could maneuver anyway, such a crude approach was both adequate and cheap.

When the guidance system determined that the missile was over its target, it locked the control surfaces, and popped out spoilers under the horizontal tailplane to put the bomb into a steep dive. Usually, though not always, this stalled the engine.

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