History of Helicopter control interfaces
Thread Starter
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 9
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From: New Zealand
History of Helicopter control interfaces
After having a look at the 'History of Helicopters' thread, and an episode of Top Gear which talked about the first car to have the now common C-B-A three pedals and gear stick setup in cars, it got me thinking: Have choppers always had the Collective (raise/lower), cyclic (forward/back/left/right etc) and torque pedal (push/push) setup in order to achieve control?
Presumably not?- So, it begs the questions: How was the current 'accepted' method of controlling a helo adopted? What was the first machine to utilise this? What have been other methods (that presumable were a failure)?
Especially with IFR helos, could it be possible to free up a hand by being able to 'pull' the cyclic up in order to raise collective? ...or other such ideas.
.....aaaaaaand begin discussion........now.
Presumably not?- So, it begs the questions: How was the current 'accepted' method of controlling a helo adopted? What was the first machine to utilise this? What have been other methods (that presumable were a failure)?
Especially with IFR helos, could it be possible to free up a hand by being able to 'pull' the cyclic up in order to raise collective? ...or other such ideas.
.....aaaaaaand begin discussion........now.
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 3,008
Likes: 62
From: North Queensland, Australia
It seems reasonable for a single sidestick type controller to do everything with a fly-by-wire setup - maybe it's been done - but you'd need some good software to edit out all the little hand movements caused by vibes and turbulence. I'm thinking small handgrip, up and down for collective, normal tilt for cyclic and rotation around the long axis for yaw.
One of the main drawbacks would probably be psychological, for blokes at least - the 'raising/lowering collective' might seem a bit too much like joining the mile high club, solo division!
One of the main drawbacks would probably be psychological, for blokes at least - the 'raising/lowering collective' might seem a bit too much like joining the mile high club, solo division!
Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 348
Likes: 0
From: Downwind
Differing Control Layouts
The sidestick has been done in a couple of ways.
Nick Lappos can tell us about the sidestick on the Comanche, which had a rather funky extra feature eliminating pedals.
Eurocopter has flown a sidestick controller with what I believe to be optic fibre transmission of the control inputs (Fly by Light?)
Other control variations;
The earliest successful german machine, the FA-223, used a 2 position collective. It was either up and used RPM for climbing/descending (interestingly enough, there's no wheelbarrow present in the photos of the test pilots for this type, but I digress) or it was fully down, in autorotation. No in between, no modulation, nothing. I understand that when down, it locked, and could only be returned to up by an engineer.
If the control cables on a Bell 47 were mixed up, you got a rather interesting dilemma to think about when attempting to take off, so I'm told.
I have always had an idea that the early Kamovs had a strange setup, but can't think of how, and don't have any references to hand. Anybody?
I believe that it was Mr Sikorsky who first produced the currently accepted layout, after deciding that the initial layout was a bit like being an Irish one-armed wallpaper hangar.
Nick Lappos can tell us about the sidestick on the Comanche, which had a rather funky extra feature eliminating pedals.
Eurocopter has flown a sidestick controller with what I believe to be optic fibre transmission of the control inputs (Fly by Light?)
Other control variations;
The earliest successful german machine, the FA-223, used a 2 position collective. It was either up and used RPM for climbing/descending (interestingly enough, there's no wheelbarrow present in the photos of the test pilots for this type, but I digress) or it was fully down, in autorotation. No in between, no modulation, nothing. I understand that when down, it locked, and could only be returned to up by an engineer.
If the control cables on a Bell 47 were mixed up, you got a rather interesting dilemma to think about when attempting to take off, so I'm told.
I have always had an idea that the early Kamovs had a strange setup, but can't think of how, and don't have any references to hand. Anybody?
I believe that it was Mr Sikorsky who first produced the currently accepted layout, after deciding that the initial layout was a bit like being an Irish one-armed wallpaper hangar.
