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Everything posted by FastCargo
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MF Mig-29 upper spine antenna?
FastCargo replied to ace888's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - General Discussion
It may be part of the spine mesh. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
Toryu, Thanks for that info on the panel...interesting to note. My understanding on our (admittedly early model) FADECs on some of our CF6s and PW4000s is that it doesn't prevent an overtemp at Firewall Power. And in fact, we have to watch out it doesn't try to transient overtemp itself on a hot, high day at calculated TOGA power. On the PW4000, it'll trim the N1 to match the calculated EPR, vs on the CF6 it'll just trim the N1 to match calculated N1. I could be wrong though. I understand the rationale behind the hard limits...I don't agree with them. You can have a hard limit aircraft available with a toggle to remove those limits. A pilot can have the understanding that by removing said limits, he could possibly break something major. My opinion is that if I'm removing that final safety...it's because I have calculated the consequences of having them are worse than the consequences of not having them. There has not been an engineer yet who has found every possible fault an aircraft (especially its software) can have. When the unexpected, unanticipated happens...I want the human in the loop to have the ultimate, final say so. That right there is a foul (in bold - my emphasis). In my opinion, ALL airline pilots should have upset-recovery, spatial disorientation, and altitude chamber training. Yes, you may only EVER see something like that happen in the aircraft once...but its wrong if that is the first time you have ever seen it in a heavy aircraft. As far as G's go...3.75g is 1.25g more that I can use if I really, Really, REALLY need it. And G-meters are easy to install... . Heck, you could even have it pop up during an aggressive pitch up (the computer recognizing that you are seriously trying to pull). FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
Toryu, Some great info there. Most of your conclusions about 'round dials' are correct...the main 2 that pilots tend to focus on are the quick general 'how goes it' glance and the 'sweep rate' (for rate of change) of the pointer. Both provide quick SA vs numbers only or tapes. Round dials main disadvantage is real estate, especially on flat screens where you have a lot of info you're trying to give the pilot in a minimum of space. Heh, reminds me of my college days. We had to come up with a project to design or redesign something using our Human Factors knowledge. I decided to take on GM and totally redesigned the mid-80s Corvette instrument panel to something far more human factors friendly, yet useful and sexy looking (big main gauges, sweep needles, no silly 85 MPH limit, etc). It ended up looking a lot like the next iteration of the panel....of course, they didn't change until the mid-90s.... Though we've had artifical feel in airliners almost since the advent of the jet, and FBW since the 757, I disagree that hard limits are appropriate for an airliner vs a fighter. Fighters are expected to operate at their limits quite often for obvious reasons, therefore, protections are more reasonable to have because you'll be going there a lot. Airliners on the other hand won't be near their limits except in extraordinary situations...to me it seems if I'm hitting that limit on purpose, there had better be a good reason. I would much rather have soft limits that I can overcome if I really, REALLY want to. A prime example is the B-1B. Due to certain aerodynamic features, the B-1B has a quirk where if you fully stall the aircraft, it is now considered unrecoverable. There are details I can tell you as to why, but suffice it to say, you do not EVER stall the aircraft or you will crash. But, the B-1B does not have a hard load/AOA limit. What it does have are protections in place that will give audio and visual warnings, and will start taking out the pilot inputs as the limit approaches. There are 3 seperate, increasingly difficult to overcome channels in fact. The upshot is that the stick requires more and more force to pull back as you reach the limit, to the point of almost requiring both hands to do it. BUT, it can be overcome by the pilot if he really, REALLY thinks he needs every last degree of AOA. In the almost 30 years of operation of the B-1B, there has not been a crash due to a pilot stalling the aircraft, but there is at least one situation I know of where the pilot needed to go past the limit to keep the aircraft from going into the dirt. Admittedly, he got himself in that situation in the first place due to an error, but was able to rescue his crew and the aircraft. In my opinion, this same option is a better idea for an airliner. Give me warnings, do what you can to discourage exceeding the limits, but if I need that extra G or rate change, let me have it. A toggle, guarded switch, something that lets me know I'm demanding more than is recommended, but I've got a damn good reason to do it. I believe in fact at least one fighter has this feature...all the examples of the Hornet. Toryu, you also talked about being able to go into Alternate Law by turning off some computers. Is this something that can be easily selected by the pilot, or does it require circuit breaker pulling / certain failure modes? FC -
As some of you know, my company's fleet has been going through substantial upgrades...757s, 777s while phasing out our 727s, DC-10s, and some A310s. We've also recently committed to a purchase of 767s that will eventually replace our MD-10-10s. We just got word that the pits in the 767s will be upgraded to a newer standard. Check this out: Awwww...yeah. Man, all I need is a Blu-Ray for that center screen... FC
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OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
This topic has been very interesting...I'm moving it to the general aviation part of the forum. I'll keep the original link here in the OFF section for folks still interested in following it. FC -
New screens for an older bird...
FastCargo replied to FastCargo's topic in Military and General Aviation
I think the yokes were omitted for clarity...I'm pretty sure my company wouldn't pay that much money to convert our yokes to sticks... (There's a joke in there somewhere...) FC -
Why is this happening?
FastCargo replied to amariani's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - General Discussion
The odd thing is I don't remember this problem existing a few iterations ago. All my aircraft seemed to sit properly originally... I'd prefer NOT having separate static models... FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
That is always the issue when you encounter something outside your experience...you tend to fallback to make it look familiar, or to react in a way that is familiar to you. Which may be totally the wrong thing to do. Your story is a great example of when instinct can totally overcome rational thought.. Here's a harrowing HUD video of a spatial disorientation incident in an F-16: The setup was a F-16 student on the wing, at night, in the weather. He goes 'lost wingman' (where the idea is to separate in a controlled manner from the formation lead if you lose sight), turns his head forward...and immediately gets disoriented because his vestibular organs have been in the wrong orientation due to looking sideways at lead. Note here he KNOWS he's disoriented, he knows what to do, but he physically can't make his body listen to the rational part of his mind to straighten up the aircraft or get on the 'round dials'. He finally manages to inform lead, who is very coolly and firmly able to break through the student's disorientation to get him on the 'round dials'. I've been in that situation of being disoriented while being on the wing in the weather...and it takes a LOT of effort to convince yourself you're not in some ungodly bank angle and lead really isn't trying to fly you into the ground. FC -
What's in Your Local Museum?
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in WOFF UE/PE - General Discussion
I love going to air museums...big and little ones. Unforturnately, some pics are film only, some visits were too long ago and I didn't have a camera, and some the museums didn't have anything that I'm really interested in. But ya know, some of the best finds have been at the smallest museums...finding stuff that they only made one or two of. Or, like today, I was at the Lone Star Museum of Flight in Galveston, TX. Though it was mostly WWII stuff, of which I'm not a huge fan like early jet stuff (that tends to be my thing), it was interesting in another way. Unlike a lot of museums which have a lot of statics and maybe one or two flyables (if any), this one, the majority of the stable is flyables. A-26, B-25, B-17, F4U, A-1E Skyraider, PT-19, a Stearman, several other birds...all flyable (and flown on a semi regular basis...a few were undergoing annuals as we were touring). I thought that was neat...last place I saw something like that was the Commemorative Air Force Museum in Midland, TX. FC -
3D max and LOD's
FastCargo replied to Dave's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - General Discussion
I didn't think you could load a LOD into MAX without reverse engineering, which usually destroys the original coordinates anyway... FC -
Why is this happening?
FastCargo replied to amariani's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - General Discussion
There is an easier way to fix it...though it might look weird on the parked aircraft. Insert the following line into the [AircraftData] section of the data.ini: OnGroundPitchAngle=xx.x Where xx.x represents the nose up angle in degrees. It will rotate the model around the CG that many degrees but only the parked birds...any flying ones won't be affected. I have not tried to see if negative numbers work (which you would need for the F-14), but it can't hurt. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
Look guys...none of us were there, and ultimately, we don't know WHY they continued to hold the stick back. I guarantee he was looking at the altitude...that's why the stick was back in the first place...but ultimately did not change the plan to adapt to the situation. Bullethead was making the point that the problem is the aircraft and the method used to operate the aircraft due to its control laws. My point was that the aircraft does have hard control limits, but still can be tossed around within those limits, and therefore cannot be slammed to the stops like a 4 year old at an arcade game...see here: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm Note the limits mentioned, and the limits not mentioned in Normal Law. The latitude is pretty wide (can you imagine 67 degrees of bank in an airliner?). But there are no mention of limits for passenger comfort. And the reason is pretty simple. There are times when operating an aircraft that you need quick response. One of the most common times is landing in a high crosswind, especially due to gusts. You have to be able to rate the aircraft in quick bursts to counter gusty winds (which seem to be common in high crosswinds at some airports). You can't do that and not cause passenger discomfort...ie spilling the wine. Other situations that are less common include windshear, GPWS alerts, threat avoidance. I don't mention TCAS because for the most part, it allows itself enough warning for relatively mild changes to flightpath to deconflict. All those situations may require high rates of change outside of your typical airliner manuvering, but well within Normal Law limits. So, it simply means you can't be 'ham hands' on a side-stick Airbus and expect to fly the aircraft reasonably...it will respond, while still staying within Normal Law limits. You'll look like an idiot, get busted on your checkride, probably cause passenger injury, and NO ONE will fly with you. The reason people think that the aircraft is 'HAL' is simply because of the hard limits. The idea that a passenger airliner ultimately has final say so on what it will do with a pilot command is abhorrent to many pilots, and so all sorts of misconceptions get perpetuated based on that fact. Myths often start out with a grain of truth, and then take a life of their own. As I have said before, I know many pilots on both sides of the issue who will argue tooth and nail why their viewpoint is right. These are guys with plenty of hours, could have their choice of aircraft, have faced their share of adversity and navigated it successfully. Each accident must be judged on its own. My opinion is that the aircraft and its control laws are not the primary issue for this accident...otherwise we'd have Airbus accidents all over the place. Instead, we still see accidents across all ranges and airframes. Also, for those who don't know, check this out: http://planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm Note the table up top...pilot error is still at roughly 50% of all commerical airliner crashes for the last 50 years...dipped a little in the 70s and 80s, rose a little in the 90s and 00s. The scary thing about this table is some yokel could argue "Well, if you just took the human out of the loop, we'd have 50% less crashes...". Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the statistic really hasn't changed in the last 50 years, even though we've been through several generations of airliners. I think the thing everyone (including myself) should take away from this discussion is to avoid non-critical thinking. Very rarely is any situation completely black and white ("Oh, it's the aircraft's fault!?" or "The pilot was a dumbass!")...the reality is usually more complex than that. We have to learn to avoid our own biases...I had to dodge mine because I don't like the Airbus control laws. I think the idea that the aircraft has the ultimate final say so to be distasteful. I have opinions as to what the pilots were thinking and why they reacted the way they did, and if I were king, what I would change about airline training to increase safety without decreasing productivity. But that's not the point of the thread. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
No. Just because the flight control system in Normal Law mode won't let you exceed its parameters doesn't mean you can't ham-hand the aircraft. What I keep interpreting from what you are saying is that the pilot can sit there and slam the stick to the stops and the jet will react like you're carrying passengers who don't want to spill their wine (the preferred way of flying). That is most definitely not true...if you are rough with the stick, you will be rough with the aircraft. The actual parameters of Normal Law are quite wide and will allow you fly well outside of what's considered efficient and effective handling. The short of it is...you still have to handle the aircraft gently and proficiently in your normal operations. Actually, you can have a situation where this occurs...windshear. You can have a situation where you are darn near full back stick, throttles to the stops, airspeed going up and down in extreme amounts, and yes, be descending. We train for this in the sim, and its Mr. Toads wild ride because the aircraft is bucking, the bells and whisles are going off, you're trying to get the nose somewhere near 20 degrees nose up, and the engines are screaming. This actually will be relevant later... Airspeed is vital to the situation...note I talk about windshear training. One of things the pilot monitoring does is bring up the flight path vector in the case of a windshear alert. This FPV looks exactly like what you would see in a modern fighter's HUD...a little circle with 3 lines representing the aircraft. It gives you instant SA as to where the flight path is in reference to the nose position...AOA. Pitch is NOT AOA. Pitch is nose position relative to the horizon...AOA is nose position relative to flight path. You could have a negative pitch angle, and still have positive AOA. See the point here? '10 degrees pitch' is nice to know...but AOA would have been MUCH more useful And your conclusions are flawed. You are making an assumption sitting here at zero airspeed, zero altitude that somehow, somebody just instantly forgot all the lessons he learned because the Airbus trained and drained it out of him. You weren't there, in the middle of the night, weather all around, aircraft buffeting, airspeed unreliable, seeing a massive descent that you can't explain right off the top of your head...that somehow, you know that you wouldn't have let that happen to you...that you would have reacted better. That 'it can't happen to me'. Bulls**t. The worse pilots I know were the ones who said 'it can't happen to me'. I typically say 'were' because a lot of them were either busted out...or are dead due to their own hubris. As a Human Factors major, I have studied aircraft accidents, not just to learn how to avoid them, but what causes them...especially the ones where a perfectly good aircraft was crashed. Some are still head scratchers, even today, but most others, once I see and envision the situation, I can see where someone could be led down that path due to various factors. The better pilots I know are the ones who look at those situations, figure how it could happen to them, then take active steps to make sure it doesn't. And lets have a little fun shall we? Your argument is that by taking more authority away from the pilot, that an Airbus (or similar advanced aircraft) is more vulnerable to pilot errors due to complacency. If that's true...why do gear up landings continue to happen? Shouldn't we be seeing a rash of gear up landings in the Airbus...because after all it sucks out basic pilot skills. And putting the landing gear down is a pretty basic skill there. And in fact, shouldn't there be LESS inadvertent gear up landings in aircraft without hard limits? I'm not talking mechanical failure here...I'm talking the pilots just plain forgot to lower perfectly good landing hear on a perfectly good aircraft? Yet, check this out in a Cessna, with a pilot who has thousands of hours: Or this incident to a Eurofighter Pilot: http://www.indiandefence.com/forums/f17/eurofighter-typhoon-4731/index19.html#post139832 Or this whoopsie: And this one personally hurts to see: There are stories and incidents from all across the spectrum and airframes of pilots needing full power to taxi after a landing. Why is that? Could it be an error not related to aircraft design? That fully experienced crews who should know better make a mistake? Even when there are multiple procedures and automation in place to prevent such a mistake? That it's a problem almost as old as the retractable landing gear aircraft that we still haven't completely fixed? Pilots, even experienced, good aircrews, make mistakes. And depending on the timing...it may be the wrong one on the wrong day. And I disagree. You are making a crass generalization based on your bias against Airbus. And you're pretty smart...I've seen you post. You know better. FC -
what is the speed limit for WOV/WOE
FastCargo replied to patriotDJ's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 1 Series - General Discussion
There is no speed limit. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
Well, in theory, you shouldn't ever get that deep into a stall. Multiple protections are in place on modern airliners to prevent this sort of thing. Then again, it shouldn't be possible to lose all 3 hydraulic systems on an A300 or DC-10 with a single point failure either...oh wait.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 Aviation is a constantly evolving field, where what we think we've learned something, only for unexpected problems to cause revisions. We've seen problems where under-automation has caused crew fatigue and overload, but over-automation has caused complacency and overload at the wrong time. Thankfully, airlines (including mine) have started scenario training for unusual aircraft situations that you shouldn't normally get into, including full stall recovery, excessive aircraft attitudes, and flight with inoperative controls. Our airline has also started to encourage more 'hand flying' in certain regimes of flight to help keep the aircrews more involved in the process. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
No. Airbus airliners do NOT fly this way. In normal operations with airliners (Boeing, Airbus, McDonnell, etc), when the autopilot is on, the aircraft is not flown with the stick, it is usually flown with the control panel. You dial in altitudes, headings, speeds, etc, either through the upfront panel or through the Flight Management System (FMS) and the aircraft goes there. You do not touch the stick or throttles. When you start moving the stick past a certain range, with the autopilot engaged, the autopilot will click off. The stick now controls the aircraft. The hard limits are still in place (various G, bank, rate limits, etc.) and alpha speed and floor are still in place (throttle up if you get too slow or too low without gear). You can still handle the aircraft way too roughly. You can slam people to the ground, break bones, or hit heads into the sides with excessive roll and pitch rates, all without exceeding the bank and G limits. You click off the auto throttle control, and you get rid of the alpha speed and floor safties too. You CANNOT handle the Airbus by going full deflection on the control stick and not start injuring or killing people doing it, even with the hardcoded limits. There was incident in fact where an A320 crew got the aircraft too fast in the descent and pulled right to 2.5Gs trying to prevent an overspeed. Just that one pull broke bones in the passenger compartment (admittedly, unexpected...folks were standing at the time)...all without exceeding the Normal Law limits. That is NOT how the aircraft is flown. As they say in Monty Python: 'No one expects to be less than 100 knots airborne in an airliner!' I've said before that I've qualified in a Boeing 737, McDonnell Douglas DC-10, an Airbus A300/A310, and the Rockwell B-1B. In absolutely NONE of those aircraft, was the idea that I could be something less than close to stall speed EVER addressed. Training consisted of stall avoidance, recognition and recovery...NOT in trying deal with a fully stalled aircraft (my term 'deep stall' is actually a misnomer...that applies to T-tails only). We didn't deal with that part of the envelope because you weren't ever expected to GET there. This is NOT an aircraft type specific problem. We deal with wind shear and GPWS (terrain) recoveries as well...but it's still assumed you're somewhat close or over minimum flying airspeed. I have friends on both sides of the fence on the Boeing/Airbus control command preference issue. Frankly, we are all scratching our heads on this part because training does tend to be universal...why the full back stick deflection the whole time? As I postulated before, my theory is that they were so overloaded, they didn't realize they were in a stall, and so never thought to lower the nose to gain airspeed to fly out of it. I hate to say this, but 95% of the time of a modern airliner's flight envelope, that's all the pilots are doing anyway is telling the aircraft where to go, and letting the autopilot take care of the getting there part. Doesn't matter if it's Boeing, Airbus, Embrarer, Canadair, etc...they ALL fly this way. In fact, above FL290 in most countries, the aircraft is required by law to fly with the autopilot working the system in normal operations (there are exceptions of course, but not for most civil airliners). What I'm trying to say is this: In my opinion, you are correct in that over reliance on automation and safety limits can result in making the wrong decisions when you lose all that protection. However, you are incorrect in assuming that this is somehow a problem unique to Airbus. It is not...there are tons of incidents across all brands of aircraft where over reliance on automation has resulted in accidents. Where automation gets pilots in trouble is when you use it as a crutch to get you to 100%. That is not the way it is to be used. Its true purpose is to keep you from getting fatigued, so that you are 100% when the time comes that you need to be. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
Well, we don't really know at this point. Sometimes reflex can be a hell of a thing to let go of...our natural instincts if in a descent of not one's own making is to pull back on the stick, and if that doesn't seem to be making the aircraft respond when it feels like it should, well, maybe you aren't pulling enough... I'll be the first to say it sounds simplistic, but weirder things have happened under stress. Here's an example of a friend of mine almost becoming a statistic because he reacted the way you normally would. He's flying in a T-38, solo, when a large bird appears to be headed straight toward his forehead (by the way, if he had not reacted, he would have hit the bird dead on in the windscreen...there's HUD video). My friend, not wishing to have a turkey vulture lunch with a side salad of plexiglass, decides to push forward on the stick to avoid the bird. The problem is that he's only about 175 knots, gear and flaps down, in a 45 degree bank, about 400 feet, with a 2500 VVI in the final turn. His rapid push forward just about doubles the VVI with less than 400 feet left until ground impact...yep, slightly less than 8 seconds to kill that much VVI while fully configured. He got immediate ground rush, and so did a stall recovery...but pulled straight to 1.0 AOA verses the recommended .8-.85 AOA. The reason we normally don't teach to pull to 1.0 AOA is that any misstep means now you're on the wrong side of the lift curve...vs .8-.85 gives you some wiggle room. That decision to go to 1.0 AOA saved his life. There are some small telephone poles off the end of the runway about 1/2 of a mile. They aren't very tall (standard small ones like you see in residential areas) with wires strung across the top. His aircraft went under those wires, 'sabre dancing' and leaving a giant rooster tail of dirt and grass. He crossed a highway (thank god no cars were in the way...he wouldn't have seen them anyway because his nose was so high), roostered some more onto the field, took out a chain link fence with his left main gear, which then snapped off, and eventually got out of ground effect. He was able to eventually bring up what remained of the landing gear and do a belly landing (a T-38 is not considered landable with only one main gear). He received a lot of flak for pushing the stick down that got him into trouble. But think about what you would instinctively do if you saw a bird the size of a large house cat about to smash into your face at 175 knots... Sometimes, instinct can be real hard to overcome, even with dedicated training. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
And folks, an addendum. I am not saying that one particular aircraft maker is better than another. Both large players in the airliner game do things and have faults that drive people crazy. Nor am I necessarily trying to change anyone's mind about their favorite manufacturer. What I am doing is trying to clear some misconceptions about how the companies do things, and why particular accidents have occurred. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
That is a little puzzling. In stall recoveries, especially low altitude, the idea is to max perform the aircraft....get the AOA just a small margin below stall to get the most lift for your current airspeed. If I were theorizing, I would suspect that they thought they were not in an actual stall due to the unreliable airspeed indicator and the fact that their pitch hasn't dropped at all. They thought they could power out of the situation and stabilize their altitude and so were pulling to the G limit. This is not the first time a blocked pitot static system has killed an airliner. Here's another...a Boeing 757 in 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroperú_Flight_603 Note some similar circumstances...night, low or no visual references, unreliable and contradictory airspeed (and altitude) indications. Basically, the aircrew flew an otherwise perfectly flying aircraft into the water because of lack of SA. Had they simply maintained a known pitch and power setting, they probably could have been okay. But with all the bells and whistles going off, they probably got overloaded, and simply missed the RALT giving them their true AGL.. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
Nowhere in that transcript does it show the aircraft is overriding the pilot's commands. The aircraft followed the pilot's commands the entire time...which is in fact why they were killed. Let me clear something up right now. 99% of the the time, a Boeing and an Airbus are flown in the exact same manner. Yes, that's right, the same so called bad over-reliance on automation is done the exact same way by both types of aircrew. Your argument for what got this crew killed is based on a flawed premise. Now, at the limits, there are some fundamental differences. In a modern Airbus (as opposed to the older A300/A310 series), there is a hard G limiter and a hard bank limiter. That's it. In full manual mode, an Airbus won't let you put it on it's back or rip the wings off...while a Boeing will. Otherwise, in the common normal modes that both types have, there are similar protections in place that, yes Virginia, will override the pilot's commands to keep the aircraft from hitting the ground or getting too slow. In fact, there is a beautiful system on the Boeing 777 that if you lose an engine at V1 (the most dangerous time to lose an engine), it flies the aircraft so well, a few friends have remarked they didn't notice anything right away except for the actual warning signals. That's with a 100,000 lb thrust class engine going to zero in a few seconds, and the system compensating with flight controls so the aircraft doesn't go into a gigantic yaw (which normally takes an assload of pilot rudder to counteract on a modern airliner). Lets talk about the accident a bit more shall we? First, this was the middle of the night, with weather. Bells and horns are going off, the aircraft is shaking, and SA is already low. The aircrew is relying on that training I mentioned eariler...training that most airline aircrew had been receiving concerning stall recovery. They are expecting to power out of a stall that was so deep, they have never encountered it before...yep, not even in the simulator. They don't have a big sky to look at to see just how nose high they were (and at about 15 degree pitch, they aren't that nose high...typical rotation angle is 18 degrees, windshear recovery is 17.5 degrees, GPWS alert recovery is 20 degrees) or how fast they are dropping. In other words, the actual aircraft attitude is within their experience...it's just the flying speed and AOA that isn't. And because their airspeed is unreliable due to the icing, they don't have reason to trust it's giving them accurate readings. Which leaves the AOA...which most airliners, again of both types, don't show on the primary attitude display. Starting to get the picture now? This isn't some Cessna on a 'clear and a million' day...it's a multi-ton automated airliner in the middle of the night in a regime of flight the aircrew has never seen before...even in a simulator. Also, unlike the stall characteristics of a high asymmetric cambered, straight winged aircraft like a Cessna, where the stall is followed by an immediate nose drop and airspeed gain (a sort of self fixing situation), the supercritical swept wing of a modern airliner in a full stall acts more like some high performance aircraft, where there isn't a definite drop in pitch, but the sink rate continues to increase at a high rate. The T-38 has a similar characteristic, like the 'Century series' aircraft it was training you for. You could sit there in the stall, the nose above the horizon, with lots of buffet, in full afterburner, and think you were okay...until your saw your VVI pegged at 6000ft per minute...in the descent. And the T-38 killed plenty of folks this way early on (yep, even in 'clear and a million' weather) until an AOA gauge was installed and brought into the cross check, and training emphasized the 'gotchas' in the flight envelope. As far as side sticks go in modern airliners, that I can't speak to. After all, these are 'side sticks', like in an F-16, and so there isn't a whole lot of movement in the first place. They probably work similar...in that there is no direct feedback in the stick other than resistance reaching the limit and a 'stick shaker'. However, in the place of opposite inputs, one stick may be a 'master' and the other a 'slave' (probably Capt and F/O in that order). However, that may not make a difference...one only has to look at Egypt Air 990 to see that even with a conventional yoke setup, the F/O can override the Captain. Personally, I'd love to fly an airliner with a side stick. Having flown 'stick and throttle' jets (small and large) my whole military career, aircraft with yokes just don't feel right and are like driving a bus. And, having been lucky enough to fly an F-16D, I am convinced that if you're going to go FBW, go with the side stick...it just feels right. In conclusion, inadequate training killed this crew, not the Airbus philosophy. I personally like Boeing's more than Airbus, but I don't consider the Airbus philosophy to be any less safe. And I've been qualified in Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Airbus airliners, so I have a little bit of knowledge on the subject. FC -
OT: If it Ain't Boeing, I Ain't Going
FastCargo replied to Bullethead's topic in Military and General Aviation
I could regale you with a few stories of Boeing software not behaving correctly either...at least one of which has caused a crash. So don't generalize a specific brand based on one crash incident. Now, what you can generalize is a training fault. Up until a little while ago, stall recovery was based on the idea of 'powering' out of the stall. The idea is that modern airliners have tons of power, and that typical stall situations were close to the ground. Therefore, the idea was to lose as little altitude as possible in a stall recovery. Most airlines were training to this standard...using the aircraft's power to gain airspeed back. This accident shows the fallacy of that recovery technique. The stall was so deep, that the engines would never power the aircraft out of the stall...it would simply fall like a leaf (a very heavy leaf) into the water. Part of the reason was the training in only lowering the nose enough to accelerate, not enough to fully break the stall. This accident (along with others) has finally started shifting the mentality back to what we all learned in basic flying...break the stall by lowering the AOA, get some flying airspeed back, then pull back up...especially if you have buttloads of altitude below you. FC -
Ya know, I'll bet no one thought when they first designed the F-16 in the mid-70s as a LWF that they would STILL be coming out with new models almost 35+ years later... FC
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B-53A Vindicator
FastCargo replied to pappychksix's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - File Announcements
Pete, where the heck ya been man??? FC -
SF2 Screenshot Thread
FastCargo replied to Stary's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - General Discussion
You and I need to have a chat... FC -
Altering AI behaviour.
FastCargo replied to garyscott's topic in Thirdwire: Strike Fighters 2 Series - General Discussion
I'm really hoping bomber AI gets improved in SF2:NA now that Backfires are included. FC