Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: news From: rdd@cactus.org (Robert Dorsett) Subject: Errata (Re: A320 sidestick description + references) X-Submission-Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 20:55:35 CST Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM X-Submission-Message-Id: <9212150255.AA13063@cactus.org> Date: 15 Dec 92 00:13:24 PST I thought I had caught most of these, but someone pointed them out: 1. A "daN" is a deca Newton, or 2.248 lbs. Airbus's main redeeming feature is that it's gone SI. 2. The "thumb-override" design means the guy with the *slowest* thumb will win, in the final estimation, not the fastest. Then again, if we really did have a thumb-war, the next guy would be fast to hit it again; I believe that's what I was thinking when I originally wrote the sentence. Apologies for any confusion this caused. 3. The comments on the necessity of applying back-stick in a turn were ambiguous. I was using as an example a situation of an airplane, straight and level. Suppose you're in a conventional airplane. You want to turn. You'd turn the wheel. This causes the airplane to bank. However, this decreases the net lift vector, which means the airplane will also descend. To counteract this effect, you'd apply slight back-stick, to command up- elevator, thus a greater angle of attack, thus more lift, to maintain level flight in the turn. It's all very coordinated, very natural. On the A320, one would simply use the stick to command a yaw. The system automagically applies the appropriate elevator correction to maintain the ancipated flight-path. If the pilot were to command any pitch-up, the airplane would CLIMB in the turn. This takes place in "Normal" law, the default flight mode. This is not "normal" as in "conventional": that's the "Direct" law, which is also the landing mode, so as to allow the pilot to handle a cross-wind landing and flare properly. If there are any more ways I can make this more confusing, please let me know. :-) --- Robert Dorsett rdd@cactus.org ...cs.utexas.edu!cactus.org!rdd