Originally Posted by
CONF iture
Of course I can, as the only reply from Bechet was :
"That's the normal functioning of the aircraft, and the normal functioning of the aircraft is not detailed in the report."
Did he say that at a press conference or at the legal proceedings? There's no point going into a lengthy, technical explanation of the systems as described above if the audience has no technical expertise and will not understand it!
but how embarrassing is it to admit that a direct command of the elevators was more adapted to save the day than a complex inefficient design ...
So, as rudderrudderrat suggests, you *are* actually arguing that an aircraft that is near maximum alpha for the current speed *and decelerating* will not stall if the elevators are subsequently deflected to the maximum? Rather you than me...
And as for your accusations of "complex, inefficient design", you couldn't be more wrong. For one thing, use of obsolete hardware meant that code efficiency was watched *very* closely and proven engineering principles were used to keep complexity down. The systems would be aware of deltas not just in airspeed and pitch, but also thrust setting and status. There simply wasn't enough airspeed to allow for more positive pitch and not enough thrust to power out of it until the aircraft was at the boundary of the forest - which was far too late. As people have pointed out before, Airbus invited pilots to pit their reflexes against the EFCS in simulated scenarios in the early days of the A320's life and to the best of my knowledge the protected aircraft outperformed even the most skilled pilot every time. Lest some pilots' hackles be raised at that assertion, this was not down to any particular genius on the part of the computers or software guys, but mainly by years and many thousands of flying hours put in by test pilots as performance data was gathered and the systems behaviour was refined.
It's not about embarrassment, it's about a bunch of disgruntled French pilots who can't let go of a two and a half-decade old issue no matter how many times they are reasonably proved wrong. If Airbus were truly trying to avoid embarrassment and deflect criticism, then why did they publicly acknowledge and correct a systems design issue - well ahead of the respective report -when one showed up after Bilbao?
Finally, I may not have direct access to the "lines of coding [sic]" - but I was taught by a guy who saw the end-to-end process first hand and could explain it thoroughly.
I should also make clear again that his visit in 1993 was not a jolly, organised by a grateful Airbus Industrie for a supporter, it was quite the opposite. Prof. Mellor was a well-known sceptic of civil digital FBW, and something of a constant thorn in their side - not just in specialist arenas such as the RISKS list, but also a prominent contributor to the highly-regarded "Black Box" TV series. While his report above concedes that he was pleasantly surprised by what he found, he retained a very cautious attitude several years later - when I first showed up in his lecture halls in 1997.