Can aircraft weight themselves?

[veewunrotate]

I think that the trident had a weight and balance system installed, though reputedly it was not too reliable. I think it used pressure sensors in the oleos of all three undercarriage so that you could also get the c of g. WRT the A320, whilst you can work out the weight from the green dot speed, it is not that accurate, and the green dot is frozen above FL300 anyway. Airbus say that an error of only 0.3 degrees in alpha position can give quite a large error.

[Silky]

I refer to my previous answer......

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Gravity always wins....

[QAVION]

Spanners.... Do you have access to KLM's Boeing MM? Their 400's have the W&B System fitted (some of them at least). The system operates on strain sensors in the axles(nose wheel) and strain sensors in the bogeys(horizontal section) of the main gear. They measure the bending of the axles and bogeys.

A computer in the MEC does all the number crunching (Another input to the system is a dedicated pitch sensor (for sensing aircraft attitude). The system is mentioned in Chapter 31-41, I believe.

Cheers.
Q.

[QAVION]

P.S. Once the W&B has been computed, this info is then sent to the FMCs.

Re: Gross Wt and CG... The 400 FMC only knows what data is sent to it by the W&B Computer (or punched into it manually).

[ballpoint]

As additional info I'd like to inform you
that on our KLM 747 classics and 400's the
W&B system is connected to the maindeck loading system.
This to shut down the system when the center of gravity moves too much backwards ant tail tipping might occur.

Regards.