Electric airplane

And don't forget that as the control surfaces are motor-moved (however little) the pressure must be fed back to the pedals and yolk, requiring yet more hardware. Beginning students may not yet understand this, but most flying is done by applying pressure, more than it is forcing movement.

That's "while trying to maintain minimum controllable airspeed." During the bad stuff, you're frequently in and out of stalls and you're just focused on keeping the plane flying. Keeping it straight and level becomes hopeless. Sometimes it's almost even not fun anymore :)

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That is only true if there are pedals and a yoke.

It seems that it would be technically feasible to create a different kind of control system where the pedals are eliminated and the yoke is place with something that uses more plastic+wire+actuator than steel/ cables/pulley?

-Le Chaud Lapin-

Agreed.

Personally, I fly for fun and do not find anything much past light chop to be any fun at all and do my planning to avoid such.

Ah, yes, I forgot to include the required feedback mechanisms.

FWIW, I read an article some time back on the development of such systems and it was found early on that the best of the professional test pilots had marginal control of the airplane in the absence of feedback.

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Wrong, presure feedback is an important part of flying and something you will learn if you ever start actually doing it.

Yeah, like what?

A human being has two hands and two feet.

One hand needs to be free for "other" stuff.

That leaves one hand and two feet to control the airplane.

What would you have other than a yoke or stick and pedals to provide

Now you could allways cross couple the rudder and ailerons like in an Ercoupe, and eliminate the rudder pedals but now you lost the ability to slip, which if you ever start really flying, you will find is an important ability to have and why the later Ercoupes had a rudder retrofit.

In a real fly-by-wire airplane the yoke/stick and pedals are usually connected by a cable and pulley system to the sensor and feedback force motor.

On some the system is hydraulic which eliminates some, but not all of the cables required.

Again, you can't just bolt the stick/yoke to the motor shaft.

Why don't you put your puerile fantasies on hold until after you've done a few crosswind landings in gusts and have learned what sort of control inputs it takes to keep an airplane lined up on final?

Force feedback to the joystick is nice but not really manditory. The model airplane crowd have been flying for years using muliple joysticks, pots, slide pots, and switched without the benfit of force feedback. Presumably, a full size aircraft will have some manner of sensors to prevent ripping the wings off.

Incidentally, I have a Microsoft Sidewinder yoke and pedals with force feedback that I use to play various simulators. I have to admit that it's a nice feature, adds to the realism, but isn't really necessary.

g yet

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I never said that force-feedback was unnecessary. I simply said that it might be a good idea to eliminate the pedals and yoke for something that would be lighter than pedals and yoke, using electronics. The same technology used in game controllers could be used airplanes, but more rugged.

Something similar to joystick. I'd use two instead of one, and place them on the sides, so that view to (large) LCD panel is not obscured.

Use the hands for flying. Feet for something else not yet discussed.

Two sticks, one on each side. There is also the matter of the computer. There are somethings that can be done by a human, like indicating what they want to happen, and others that could be done by computer, like making it happen.

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I thought that design was mostly a mechanical change, not computer.

There are other ways of doing it that would eliminate cables, pulleys, weight.

Never said I would do that.

There is a lot that can be done with localized feedback, a computer, and light-weight wiring system, but not a wiring system where there is a direct connection between the joystick and the surface it would control. The connection would be between the joystick and a computer, and between the computer and sensors/actuators.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

Real world tests with professional test pilots in the early development of fly-by-wire found that absent force feedback control of the airplane was sloppy at best.

So yes, it is possible but you wouldn't want to do it.

As far as model airplanes go, I haven't seen many (actually none) landings I'd call a greaser.

You are talking about a pilotless aircraft then.

I believe that without the feedback it would be too easy to over control.

For reason stated,I disagree.

Models don't count; the pilot is exterior to the plane and the feedback is visual. Sometimes an RC plane loses it's wing in flight because the pilot over-controls.

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The yoke and pedals don't weigh much of anything and have to be strong enough to stand up a panic application of force no matter what they are hooked to.

Game controllers use sticks or yokes and pedals, so what you are really saying is you want to replace sticks or yokes and pedal with sticks or yokes and pedals.

So it would require two hands to control the airplane instead of one.

Now, how do you write down a clearance or transponder code from ATC?

How do you adjust the engine controls?

How do you open or close the cabin air vents, wipe your nose, clean your glasses, open a chart, take a drink, or any of a number of things you need a free hand to do while in flight?

Yes, everything in the Ercoupe was mechanical, but that is irrelevant.

So name it.

The controls have to link to something to sense the input motion and provide force feedback. That requires a motion sensor and a motor.

You can't just bolt a stick to a motor shaft.

Then say how you would do it and quite avoiding the question.

Sheer babble.

You can't bolt a motor shaft directly to a flight surface or a stick.

How are you going to mechanically connect the stick and control surfaces to their motors and sensors without a cable and pulley system?

And you have still not addressed the base question of what is it that a fly-by-wire system could do in a GA aircraft that conventional systems can not do.

He has no clue what he is talking about.

I think that is what was found and that the flying was "sloppy" at best and not something one would want to do with gusty crosswinds on final.

I've been trying to find the article, which I think it was a NASA historical thing, but haven't found it yet.

I'll bet what it says is that the pilot gets behind what the plane is doing, and gets into a catch=up mode, which would be hazardous.

What do they call the mode some BIG planes use to have the plane land itself? Mode C?

Mode C is a transponder reply that includes altitude information.

In general they are called autoland systems and what you are probably thinking of is that the airport has to have a Category III (or Cat 3) approach.

I see this a bit different. In many model (toy ;-) ) airplanes you will find at least a solid state giro. In some model helicopters the giro is an inherent part of the design, for example the Draganflyer, have a look here:

So, I think that when Le Chaud Lapin talks about 'the next step', he is not proposing to control the wires, he must be proposing to control the auto-pilot system. It is the task of the auto-pilot system to make sure the stress limits of the airplane are observed. You tell it heading, altitude, and speed (which it can override, it will know minimum airspeed). One step further, and imagine even if 10 % of the people who use cars now, will start using airplanes, then the airways will be completely full. There will be a plane ahead of you and one behind you all the time. You get into the plane, type destination into the computer, The computer will get the weather between where you are and your destination, tell you to take a train or car if it cannot find a safe route, it will tell you how much [nore] fuel you need, it will run all checklists, it will not forget flaps (the recent crash in Spain I did read may have been caused by that), and it will run the takeoff program. Then it will run the navigation program, connect with ground to make sure it is in the right position relative to other aircraft, and at the destination it will run the landing checklists and program. It will not forget to put the gear down....

So you - [computer - autopilot] airplane.

It is the only way there can be that much traffic. With all manual controls except the destination field to type in gone, sure some people will complain that that is not really 'flying'. '. For those the Cessna or Tiger Moth, or whatever, they can fly in reserved areas, like we now have race tracks for people who MUST break the speed limit.

When something goes wrong, of course there is not much you can do, as you cannot fly, and even if you could there are no controls... A message will be displayed: 'Kiss yourself goodbye', or if you are lucky : 'parachute under your seat, jump now', or 'any preference of farm you want to buy?'

This is not much different from a passenger jet, no parachutes either... only life vests, even if you fly over land....

In a real airplane you will find several gyros, whether the airplane has an autopilot or not.

Then he is a clueless idiot.

Autopilots and his "next step" have been around for better than half a century.

Autopilots contain gyros as well as inputs from various sensors, including altitude, airspeed, GPS, VOR/LOC, GS, etc. and yes, they have processors in them.

Modern autopilots are more than capable of flying the airplane from takeoff to landing, though that is seldom done for a whole bunch of reasons.