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BobsV35B(at)aol.com
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 Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 6:07 am Post subject: No Title |
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Good Morning 'Lectric Bob,
Interesting thoughts from Doctor Dee.
It brings me to question if my strong advocacy of the T&B over the TC might be some evidence of my personal conditioning.
It also leads me to think that maybe I am right in my feelings and that the quandary we find ourselves in when we get confused about which way is up is caused by that lack of consistency in our perceptions
Sooo .... I have already added another thing for me to worry about! <G>
Not sure where you were working at the time or how close you were to automatic flight, but I bet you know about how Beech competed with Mooney's PC.
Beech installed a Century I (The folks who made it were called Edo Aire Mitchell at the time) Wing Leveler and my memory is that they called it the Constant Copilot. The main difference was that Beech provided an ON/OFF switch so the pilot could choose to use it or not.
My recollection is that Piper offered a similar unit, but I do not recall who made it for them or what they called it.
Back to the Constant Copilot.
If the switch was left on, the wing leveler worked full time just like the Mooney PC. It could be easily over ridden without causing any damage to the unit and it was made inoperative by pressing an interrupter switch on the control wheel. Take your thumb off the switch button and the leveler took over.
We always told our customers to use it regularly.
Almost nobody did!
Just a bit more musing if you don't mind.
Back when autopilots were first being introduced in air carrier use, one of the first things we were taught to do when any flight attitude problem was encountered was to turn OFF the autopilot. The thought was that any deviation from normal was most likely caused by an autopilot failure. When we flew into turbulence, we were also told to turn off the autopilot. That attitude certainly did not encourage us to rely on the autopilot when things started to get dicey.
Maybe we need to train pilots to use and trust the autopilot from the very first time they ever get in the airplane? That is almost how the Airbus pilots are trained today!
For fully automatic landings, we initially used three autopilots and a comparator circuit that told us to execute a miss if any one of those three autopilots felt that things are not going well.
Seems as if there is something worthwhile in that fully automatic flight regime, but the issues are not easily solved.
Happy Skies,
Old Bob
PS My current transportation steed is a 1978 V35B and I still keep the Century I Constant Copilot in good working order. The early ones shared a roll servo with the regular autopilot and that was how mine was set up when I bought it. A few years ago I changed the primary autopilot. The new one has it's own roll servo so my airplane now has two roll autopilots available. If I hit the interrupter button, both are turned off. When I let go of the button, the Century One will come back on line but the primary one stays off. The only problem is that I can't use both at the same time because they will fight with each other! Not sophisticated enough to use the same inputs and do the comparison bit.
In a message dated 7/19/2009 10:39:26 P.M. Central Daylight Time, nuckolls.bob(at)aeroelectric.com writes:
| Quote: | At 06:06 PM 7/19/2009, you wrote:
| Quote: | Good Evening Bob,
I agree with your evaluation, but back when Mooney tried it, most pilots didn't care for it. You would regularly find the interrupt button taped down thus deactivating the system. I feel certain that some method could be made to work and still be acceptable to the average pilot, but no one has, as yet, figured out that method. |
Yeah . . . PC (positive control) by Brittain as I recall.
A totally pneumatic wing leveler that operated directly
though valves at the back of the turn-coordinator driving
"tomato juice can" servos. A truly elegant design for its
time. Just found that the system is still offered at:
http://www.brittainautopilots.com/
I liked it. You couldn't hurt it by direct over-ride while
engaged. No servos to smoke, no clutches to burn, no
engagement solenoids to burn out. This was TSO-C3a hardware
which tells us how far back that goes. I did a little white
paper for Cessna way back when that suggested large diaphragm
pneumatic force cartridges operated by pitot/static delta-P
and permanently rigged to ailerons. A simple reed valve system
driven from a turn-coordinator would drive a simple set
of electronics that consumed less than 1 watt of total power.
Three moving parts, no lubrication issues, etc. etc. But they
were the proud owners of ARC who was already offering a line
of autopilots that plagued with every failure mode that such
devices might offer . . .
| Quote: |
Had JFK jr just let his autopilot fly his airplane, we would probably have a light plane pilot high in our government hierarchy by now. |
Hmmm . . . you can lead a horse to water. . .
All we can do as teachers/designers/suppliers is offer well
considered advice backed by a history of recipes for success. Dr.
Dee speaks of a human condition known as "cognitive dissonance"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
which we've all observed first hand: "I KNOW that
smoking is bad for me . . . but I (like/need/want)
to do it". We've all observed a pilot's worst ever
day in the cockpit that appeared to rise from a
dead-short-between-the-headphones. It's called the
"bell curve". For the very best among us, there MUST
be individuals who balance out the other end of the
curve.
| Quote: |
'Tis a quandary indeed!
|
Let us continue to strive for position on the upper
slope of that curve . . .
Bob . . .
---------------------------------------
( . . . a long habit of not thinking )
( a thing wrong, gives it a superficial )
( appearance of being right . . . )
( )
( -Thomas Paine 1776- )
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