Well, since you have to be a carrier-qualified, active duty, Navy or Marine tactical jet pilot with at least 1,350 hours, and before you can become that you have to have, among other things, a 4 year degree, I doubt by that point the math is much of a problem.
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
Anyone who would use Windows in an airplane is either insane or merely a fool.
Thanks, Rich
It's only wheel-barrowing for a fraction of a second. The nose wheel touches the ground first while the a/c is still descending. The contact is very brief, and the springs push the nose back up into the air.
The pilot's first instinct is to push the nose back down, but he overcontrols and the nosewheel hits again. Now the pilot is 180 degrees out of phase with the a/c, and the resulting pio usually results in a crash.
But thats exactly what pio is. However it starts, the pilot ends up out of phase with what the a/c is doing.
It is very difficult to break out of that loop. The pilot in the F8 Crusader example above was extremely good. But he was also extremely lucky since he was well above the stall speed of the plane. When he got into the pio, he still had enough airspeed to be able to climb and get out of it. That was an amazing piece of airmanship. But if he was at or below the stall speed when the pio started, he would have crashed.
Personally, I think proportional force feedback is mandantory. There are many other situations where the lack of feedback would cause the pilot to overcontrol and pull the wings or tail from the a/c.
One example is recovering from a spin. The nose is pointed straight down at the ground, and if you obey your instincts and try to pull up too fast, you will likely lose the wings.
Another example is the crash of American Airlines flight 587 at JFK.
The lack of proportional force feedback on the rudder pedals led the copilot into overcontrolling the plane. He ripped the rudder off, followed by the engines. The result was the second worst crash in US aviation history. This is described in a bit more detail here:
"Unknown to either the co-pilot or the airline's trainers, a change in the way the plane's rudder mechanism worked seriously worsened the problem. The change made the rudder control pedals far more sensitive than any other plane's - including other Airbus models - and the sensitivity increased dramatically with speed. This is exactly the circumstance where excessive use of the rudder can cause high stresses on it."
Another example is my second pio. This happened in Malibu N4360V, which I bought new in 1984. You can see it coming over the threshold while landing:
Notice the very wide stance of the main gear. This forms an almost equilateral triangle with the nose gear. Normally this is considered very good since it increases the stability whenever the wheels are touching the ground. I flew this a/c cross-country from San Jose to Boca Raton, Florida many times without incident.
But one time while landing in Palm Springs, everything was perfectly normal until touchdown. The instant the wheels hit, the a/c went into a very violent side-to-side oscillation that I could not control. I quickly took my hands and feet off the controls to let the plane stabilize, and luckily it ended up aligned with the runway and I completed the rollout normally.
Would training have helped? Probably not. It started and was over in fractions of a second.
Would force feedback help? No, in this case there was already normal force feedback.
I think the problem with flying is things can go along normally for a very long time, then suddenly something happens that is totally unexpected. It happens so fast that the pilot ends up overcontrolling the a/c, which usually results in a crash. The problem is most of the time it is completely unpredictable.
In a perfect world, the a/c would be decoupled from the pilot, and sufficient force feedback to make the pilot think he was in control.
But the software would not let the pilot get into the kind of situations that would lead to loss of the a/c. It would eliminate spins and stalls, flying into mountains or thunderstorms, running out of gas, flying into known icing, high-speed stalls, and all the other ways we can kill ourself in the air.
I don't think we are good enough to write that software. Close, yes. But not perfect yet.
Best Regards,
Mike Monett
So, instead of solving the landing problem, supply some VTOL tilt rotor features in the proposed airplane. If that's too complex, do a Mars Lander style balloon bounce landing. Kinda like landing on an automotive air bag. If this is too radical, hang autogyro rotor blades above the wings and get zero ground roll on landing:
A little too much of both.
My apologies. You're correct. I knew there was some yaw, but I forgot the mechanism.
Power off landings are more fun:
I've never tried one except with a simulator.
Hmmm... Good point. There has to be some indication that the trim tabs have been correctly adjusted. That's usually felt in the yoke or stick. However, even with fly by wire, it would be easy enough to display the load or pressure on the elevators on a panel indicator. Tune for zero or null. It could even be automated with computah controls.
Me too. It soured me on flying for many years.
Berlin Avionics at clover Field er... Santa Monica Airport (SMO). Ed Berlin and I went from Jr High Skool through college together. I'm not directly involved and have not been in the L.A. area since about
1995.
Yeah, something like that. There was also considerable resistance from the airline pilots union (Teamsters) over potentially losing some jobs. They seemed to be afraid of hands off landings which might allow the airlines to hire less experienced pilots. I don't remember much about the situation except that it died very slowly and in stages, rather than a sudden termination of funding and testing. Whatever the price or politics, MLS did demonstrate that it was possible to do hands off landings.
Well, that's good description of me. I know enough about flying to get some things wrong, have giant holes in my education, lack sufficient experience to know what's important, and have to use Google to looking things I either forgot or never learned. I don't see a problem. In another newsgroup, alt.internet.wireless, I have exactly the same problem with people asking questions. However, instead of cross examining them or trying to make them look like fools, I answer their questions, supply considerable detail, run through the calculations, helped inscribe an FAQ, and generally educate anyone that asks a reasonable question. May I suggest you reconsider your methodology and withhold judgment of your audience.
why prevent someone else from doing something simply because you find it unacceptable? There seems to be reasonable arguments on both sides of the fly by wire and force feedback argument that would make it at least worth trying. If the industry adopted your logic, nothing would ever get done simply because the best and most radical ideas tend to collect the most critics and criticism. Dumb ideas are usually ignored and left to demonstrate their own shortcomings. I initially thought Mr Lapin's ideas were rather marginal. Yet, with all the resistance and attention you're giving to the problem, I'm beginning to suspect that his ideas might be worthy of a closer look (after they get more organized).
Agreed. Now, how much safer and easier? A few percentage points? Is that sufficient to justify trashing the idea? Perhaps the alleged benefits of fly by wire (lower weight, possible redundancy, ease of instrument interface, stall avoidance, spin avoidance, landing augmentation, etc) might be worth losing a few percentage points in safety and ease of flying? I really don't know, but suggesting that it not going to answer these questions.
Right. I can also do some really illegal and dangerous flying on a simulator. For example, MS Flight Sim 9 default takeoff from Oakland goes by the Bay bridge. I just can't resist the temptation to fly under the bridge. Easy enough in a Cessna 172. Much more challenging in a Boeing 737.
Same with a RC model helicopter. The big ones are not cheap. They're also easy to crash. So, I use an RC airplane and helicopter simulator. Plug a PIC controller interface between a Futaba "training" port and a PC serial port, and practice flying: (old but what I'm using) (try the video at bottom) I'm still a total klutz with a model helicopter that doesn't have gyro stabilization. Sigh.
One catch. The military demands that its pilots take some time off after simulator training, before getting into a real airplane. I can see the logic as I also tended to be rather awkward until I get used to the change in the feel of the controls.
Back on subject (Electric Airplane), I wonder if the motor becomes a generator on decent and re-charges the LIPO batteries?
-- # Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060 # 831-336-2558 jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us # http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com # http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS
As I recall there were also non-compatible European schemes which caused the political problems as any system adopted would need to be an international standard.
No, its not, you are not an idiot.
Industry and the military made the decision decades ago and all fly-by-wire airplanes have force feedback.
For GA, ignoring for a moment no one would be willing to pay for the cost of a fly-by-wire system in a GA airplane, such an airplane without force feedback would not be able to meet the Part 23 requirements for stability and controlablity.
For home builts, anyone could build one if they so desired, however you would never be able to sell a kit or plans as the airplane would quickly get the reputation of being squirrelly without force feedback.
Not likely since you still carry a fair amount of power until short final.
Generating power implies the prop is acting as a brake which in turn implies a severe decent angle and an ear popping rate of decent.
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
So you claim to have done at 20 what some here (s.e.d) have done at 15 or less as a great accomplishment; what kit did you use?
Teen tyro. It is merely a somewhat era specific shorthand for any complex mixed mode IC.
There are plenty of people here (s.e.d) that can do any modulation you want on an embedded DDS in an FPGA. Not my area of expertise, try Highland Technology or TransGalactic Instruments, both owned by regulars here.
So you really do not have a clue. Nor do you pick up ones given to you.
OK, rabbit where did you graduate from? Earlier in THIS thread you said you were an engineering student. All i can see is a lying braggart with nothing to offer.
Go Jim. Keep it up with your on point questions and we all watch the rabbit run.
I said student pilot, not engineering student.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Argh. You chopped off the best parts of my rant. Oh well.
As far as aviation is concerned, I may as well be. I would like to think that my background and education qualifies me to 2nd guess my way through the technology. Usually, that works for the basics, but fails miserably where experience would be a better teacher than physics. I would prefer to be treated as an idiot so I can "harvest" the explanations.
Yep. However, I'm suspicious. Man is a very conservative animal which doesn't change it ways very easily. The market for fly by wire airplanes are almost totally composed of existing cable and pulley pilots. They have developed a preference for force feedback and would probably insist that any future technology retain the older features. It's something like the automobile industry taking 10 year to get rid of the buggy whip socket, typewriter features on computah keyboards, printers that were really motorized typewriters, and other elements of conservative product design. Also parachute design, which I've been told took years to get away from the round chute. Rather than retrain experienced pilots, it probably makes more sense to give them an environment that they're familiar with. With all the regulatory and historical baggage to consider, radical changes will become evolutionary changes.
Incidentally, I don't think Neil Armstrong had force feedback on the Apollo capsule moon lander.
Spoken like a bureaucrat, where literally everything needs to fit into the existing regulatory structure. I've spent years watching the alternative energy horde struggle with codes and regulations, many of which were totally unsuitable for the intended purpose. It was only in about 2001 when the NFPA finally got around to even recognizing alternative energy. The technology had to change a little, but most of the changes were in the regulations and codes. The same will be for any new thing in aviation. You can force fit an electric airplane into the existing regulatory framework, but there will need to be some changes.
Well, there are several ways to view an airplane design. One is a box that flys through the air and is moved by an air motor. You start with the aerodynamic surfaces and add the necessary propulsion. Another is to start with an engine, and build the aerodynamics around it. Since this is about an electric airplane, some major changes will need to be made. For example, the infernal combustion engine tends to be a rather compact device, with a concentrated center of gravity, while the electric motor and its battery pile, can have the weight distributed around the airframe. There's also no (major) efficiency gain from concentrating the propulsion in a single motor. A series of small electric motors can be distributed along the wing. While elevators, flaps, rudders, and other control surfaces are nice for gliding, with multiple motors, it might be possible use the motors for directional control. Use your imagination.
Mr Lapin apparently has a functional imagination. However, he has a different problem. He fails to separate the important problems from the trivia. Much of what he suggests has to do with accessories, options, gadgets, goodies, convenience features, and other dross that has little to do with the basic functioning of an electric airplane. Ignore the propulsion and aerodynamic issues, and all the SDR and computah technology is not going to make the pile of ideas fly.
Note: I have the advantage in using my imagination. Since I don't know what I'm doing in aviation and aerodynamics, I don't know what cannot be done and what will not work. Same for Mr Lapin. We may therefore produce a wide array of dumb and impractical ideas, but among the debris, you might find a few good ideas and imaginative solutions. Keep an open mind.
Drivel: One of my past side activities was helping out at the local high skool on their senior projects. Everyone gets to build and/or design something in their senior year (usually in small teams). While I try to keep some of the ideas within the range of what can be accomplished in a few weeks, the degree of imagination and originality of these kids is far beyond what I've seen in industry. I have a guess where we lose it. It's possible to be creative and imaginative within a regulatory framework, but it's much more difficult.
Ooops. Y'er right. Yet, it would be tempting to use gravity to recover some energy. For example, if the mythical electric airplane were to have oversized wing surfaces (for gliding and STOL), it might be possible recover some energy without going into a steep dive. It won't be much, but if the added energy recovery can produce a proportionate reduction in the size and weight of the LIPO battery pile for the same flight duration, it's a win.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I haven't heard any claims from you that you know better than the results of a hundred years of experience based on your couple of unrelated engineering classes.
If it works and is easy to use, why change it?
You're advocating German engineering; the people will accomodate the machine rather than building the machine to accomodate the people.
I must have missed seeing the wings and other aerodynamic surfaces on the Apollo capsule.
AIR, there was also a predictor to help with getting the vertical speed to zero at the same time as the altitude.
Those requlations are built on a huge pile of dead bodies.
There may be some minor areas for quibble, but not for basic stuff like stability and controlablity.
My imagination says depending on motors for directional control will ultimately result in a smoking crater.
Actually, there are a lot of very good aerodynamic reasons to minimize the number of motors on an airplane, no matter what type they are.
That was discovered in the very early days of aviation.
That and he has weird ideas like somehow magically a socketed LED is easier to change than a socketed incandescent lamp.
If someone suggests replacing rubber balloons with steel ones to minimize the helium leakage, I'll give the idea everything it deserves...
A lot of regulations exist because people are dead.
Before someone whines about being constrained by regulations they need to find out why the regulation exists.
It is all fantasy anyway since absent a major breakthrough in battery technology there isn't going to be any practical electric airplanes.
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
Your assessment is quite accurate.
Just this morning, I walking my puppy through the woods, pondering the fairness of proposing a new type of aircraft, but only discussing those features that are obviously realizable, while deliberately omitting that which, if not addressed, would make all others moot.
The propulsion system does, in fact, influence every other aspect of the aircraft. If my ideas are wrong, there is no point in further consideration, so it seems that it would make sense to discuss it first. A year ago, before I got into aviation, I would have at least put out the idea of for consideration. But I decided not to do that for two reasons:
Right. There is a benefit from getting to close to status quo. Total rejection of extant knowledge is not good, but neither is total acceptance. There is an optimal mid-point at which an outsider might linger in a state of amusement for maximum observability. Sometimes one might find something. Sometimes not.
To be honest, what drew me deeper into thinking about flight, aside from the standard generic lifelong interest in airplanes, was not any research papers on aerodynamics or technical articles. It was my textbook in ground school [Jeppesen]. There were a few errors present, minor things, like saying "power" when they meant "energy", voltage when they mean current, things like that. Then, one day, while sitting in lobby in flight school, there was group of student pilots cramming for exam. I was studying too. They said, "What are you doing with all those books...?" I said, "I can probably pass the test, but I feel like the material was a bit shallow. I want to actually know what's going on." Anyhow we got into argument about whether it is necessary to have technical understanding of flight, and they insisted that I just go to WWW and find the questions most likely to be asked by FAA, and memorize them. Appalling. And so it went on like this until I learned that some of the pilots did not understand basic Newtonian physics. Vector math was taboo. One person in rec.aviation.piloting actually believed that straws work because of a "suction force". See Message 303:
And then I talked to my flight instructor, then ground school owner, again, and discovered that most pilots did not understand basic aerodynamics. If you ask them why planes fly, they rattle something off about Bernoulli's principle. Bernoulli's principle is correct, but their employment of it was wrong.
Then I read a book by Barry Schiff:
...that said in 1st chapter that most pilots have totally incorrect understanding of lift. By this time I was doing my own experiments with paper and plastic, which lead to meandering excursion (again) into fluid dynamics and an examination of an essay by Maxwell. An ancillary treat was that I rediscovered Heaviside, who did far more than popularize Laplace transforms for system analysis. Incredible person.
But the straw that broke the camel's back was the NASA article that said that even some university professors have incorrect understanding of lift:
Then it got worse from there, with some people devising exotic theories, some of which were highly suspicious.
In any case, it became clear that the science of lift was *NOT* a settled matter. There were many people in rec.aviation.piloting who insisted that it was, contrary to the NASA article, and many articles on the WWW that agree, at least, that it is not yet understood.
In all of this, I developed my own ideas, experimented with small paper and plastic for tests. My ideas or incomplete, but I have been able to get lift out of small models using ad-hoc equipment. I would need significant electronics, electrodynamics, and computer control to make such a plane fly.
Thus validating my supposition that certain would-be critiques are predisposed to regard the new idea as being bad before it is known what the idea is.
eI agree.
Note that I have not been the one whining about regulation. On the contrary, I have been defending the need for it, as well as the FAA itself. It has been the pilots who have beens stating that nothing will be innovated signigicantly different from Cessna-tractor model because FAA would never allow it.
Under what category would fuel-cell plane fall?
-Le Chaud Lapin-
The only way known to science to propel a free flying aircraft is to accerate air (ignoring rockets).
The only way known to science to accelerate air in sufficient volume is by the use of a fan of some sort, as in a propeller or the fans in a jet.
Methods like ion wind don't produce enough volume.
If you have stumbled onto some hitherto unknown method of propulsion, you need to get your suit cleaned for your Nobel acceptance ceremony.
Babbling nonsense.
You can't possibly know if an idea is new unless you know what all the old ideas are.
Total, utter, nonsense.
Knowing how to do a wind triangle problem is a required subject for a private pilot and wind triangles are vector math.
Yeah, lots of people that are not aerodynamic engineers don't really understand the basic physics of lift.
So what?
Babbling drivel; I stated what the idea is.
Lier.
You've constantly said you would use materials not allowed by regulation and the latest flight into Emperor of the Universe world was stating you would totally change how ATC works.
Fuel cells are fuel cells. Though they sort of work like a battery, they are sufficiently different that they get their own name.
The techonological state of fuel cells as regards airplane is the same as batteries; a practical fuel cell powered airplane is fantasy absent a major technological breakthrough.
What is it that you home built fly-by-wire airplane will be able to do that any modern airplane such as a Cirrus SR22 can't do?
What materials are you going to use to build the airframe of your home built?
If you encounter significant turbulence, what is the first thing you do and why?
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
On a sunny day (Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:25:07 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@specsol.spam.sux.com wrote in :
No fan needed:
Ramjet:
Atomic ramjet:
I have also see a Dutch helicopter fly with ramjets on the rotorblades, many many decennia ago.
many decennia ago.
Yeah, I should have added the disclaimer that rockets and ramjets don't count as neither is practical for GA aircraft.
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
You give me more credit than I'm due. I'm constantly stretching my area of expertise into adjacent areas, some of which I know little. Aviation would be a good example of such an adjacent area. Yet, that's the way I learn. I try to indicate when I'm not so sure about my deductions and logic, and try to avoid pontifications (voice of ultimate authority). Yet, that's the way I learn. If I remain within the walled garden of my area of expertise, I never grow. If I take a chance and push the boundaries, I learn. I also learn much more from answering questions than from asking them. It doesn't take much to supply a boiler plate answer to some question based on some fast Google lookups. It takes much more to supply a detailed explanation of how it works, multiple alternatives, implications of doing it this way or that way, plus a list of vendors if applicable. If that's in an area where I'm not too familiar, the time is well spent. Unfortunately the result is an occasional screwup or misinterpretation, but that's the price of my methodology.
I can't believe that you said that. If we adopted such a conservative and possibly reactionary policy towards technology, we would be driving horse carriages, writing with a goose quill pen, and dreaming of flying. New ideas and products rarely offer revolutionary improvements in anything. The entire world didn't toss their incandescent bulbs when LED's arrived. Digital photography has not totally trashed film. Home theater has not killed movie theaters. Some people still use typewriters. Ad nauseam. Even the most revolutionary products fail to produce the predicted mass migrations.
Change comes in small increments. It's really evolutionary, not revolutionary, especially in mature products. That includes airplanes. If Mr Lapin's new and improved designs offer a 1% incremental improvement in economy, efficiency, reliability, comfort, or some other desirable feature, it's worth doing. Why? Because 100 such 1% sequential evolutionary changes are the equivalent of a 100% revolutionary product.
I also have a problem with "it works" and "easy to use" terms. These are relative terms. There are plenty of products available that are designated at totally functional, which morph into unusable garbage as soon as the new and improved version is advertised. I didn't realize how crappy my mattress was until I did a test flight on a new mattress design. Bicycles are a good example. Many of the strange frame designs are intended to optimize some riding technique. I had decided that shocks and springs were useless until I compared the ride with and without these on a rough dirt road.
It's really a matter of perception. Your perception is that general aviation aircraft work and are easy to use. That's probably because you're profient and comfortable operating one. Not knowing any better, I would pre-judge the typical small airplane as a nightmare of complexity, seriously uncomfortable, extremely noisy, and radically overpriced. I'm willing to tolerate all of these in order to fly, but given the choice of an improved version, I would certainly consider it. Let's just say there's no progress unless someone is dissatisfied with the existing technology and products.
I don't recall even mentioning the pilot or passengers. I don't think either extreme is proper engineering. However, think about which is more adaptable, the pilot or the machine? If you hit turbulent air, the pilot will adapt, but the airplane might fall apart. Man has traveled and operated some really uncomfortable devices just to get around or do things. Last time I checked, nobody is building custom fitted airplanes around an individual.
I was thinking more of a helicopter landing. I've done both the lunar lander and various helicopters in simulators. They feel very simulator even though they operate on different principles. The helicopter and fixed wing pilots apparently insist on force feedback. Yet the Apollo astronauts seemed to do well enough without it.
Some sacrifices must be made in the name of progress. For quite a while, in this area, it was deemed necessary to have a skool kid killed by a motorist before the state would install a traffic signal. While I'm sure it's not intentional or justifiable, fatalities do tend to be a part of progress.
Well, the various military stealth aircraft are quite unstable and difficult to control. The only reason they fly successfully is with the aid of substantial computer horsepower doing its best to maintain proper attitude. Perhaps general aviation might consider using a similar approach? Mr Lapin designs a flying machine that by itself is difficult to control and fly. Add some computer, servos, sensors, fly by wire, and you have a usable airplane. It's kinda like that with model helicopters. The ones without gyro stabilization are really difficult to fly. The ones with gyros are really easy (and more fun).
Well, your imagination is in top form. I looked up the method of control for various flying wings and found that they don't use motors for controlling the airplane. They use various drag surfaces instead. The problem is somewhat unique to tail-less airplanes, where placing a fin and rudder on the wing center is useless:
However, I'm again suspicious. My guess(tm) is that the reason motors were not used for control is the difficulty of controlling motor speed in propeller type aircraft. In the days before jets, we just didn't have the sensors and computahs needed to control multiple small motors in a predictable manner. That's one place where adding some computing power might be useful.
I think I can guess(tm) one of the reasons. Most of the work gets done near the tips of the propellers because that's the point of maximum air velocity. Near the spindle, there's not enough air flow to do much. In addition, the motor or fuselage blocks the air flow. So, the idea is to maximize the propeller diameter (without hitting the runway). Therefore one big prop is more effective than two small props with the same swept area. However, electric motors don't need to be as big and bulky as infernal corruption engines. The can be made long and thin, thus blocking less propeller area.
Yep. So, we go back to basics and verify that the discovery still holds for long thin multiple electric motors.
Of course. Some such ideas are obviously not going to work. Yet, I would not discourage that person from trying other materials.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Ben Franklin). Yeah, I know it's out of context but it applies. The push for safety tends to limit creativity, progress, innovation, and ingenuity. Also product liability and prescription drug litigation. Someone dies and the legislative machinery crafts restrictive regulations. Do this often enough, and everything comes to a grinding halt. While it's rather unpopular to advocate LESS safety, I sometimes think we've overdone it in some areas.
That's often not in the regulations. There are also regulations that were inspired by manufacturer or interest group lobbyists to give them an advantage. Knowing the background is always a good thing, but it's usually difficult to find.
Yep. That's what the pundits were saying in the 1970's when battery technology became the limiting factor in everything from cell phones to electric airplanes. Along came Lithium-Ion and LIPO, which offered a big step in the right direction. Maybe a few more steps and we have something slightly better, etc?
The trouble with aviation is that it attracts too many bright and smart people. If its proponents were dumb, we wouldn't have to deal an overdose of ideas such as:
Using gravity to get off the ground
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
OK, so I forgot to add "and changing it offers no improvement in either usability or price".
And as for your examples, the automobile provides a huge improvement in usability and ease of use over the horse carriage, and the same for the ball point pen over the goose quill.
You were specifically saying pilots could learn to adapt to controls without force feedback.
I'm saying expecting pilots to "adapt" and have yet greater skill to operate something alread easy to operate is German engineering.
The sacrifices have been made; there is no need to repeat the experience.
Yeah, so what?
We are talking about normal category, Part 23 aircraft, NOT a weapon of war with a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1, a highly stressed airframe capable of extreme aerobatics, and a pilot wearing a G suit who spends more time training than most GA pilots spend in total flying in their lives.
Basing what should go in GA aircraft based on what is in military aircraft makes as much sense as advocating nuclear reactors in bass boats because military boats have them.
If your control comes from power, how do you fly with little to no power as on short final?
So can turboprops, yet there are LOTS of single engine turbopros.
Guess again.
And most of the "ideas" I seen on the subject fall well into that category.
Maybe, however for the specific topic at hand, unless you can point to something in Part 23 for normal category airplanes to talk about, you are just arm waving.
Nope.
All federal requlations have a discussion period before adoption.
More than likely we will soon have something slightly better, but it will take better than an order of magnitude improvement to make a practical electric airplanes anything other than fantasy.
And there were portable phones in the 70's, you just couldn't put one in your pocket, and as far as being a TELEPHONE, the current crop don't do anything the 70's phones could do.
That is not an airplane by definition; it is an airship.
Would you like a real, long list of reasons why that thing will never be anything other than a curiosity and not allowed to fly much of anywhere IF the genius that thought it up ever gets one built?
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
Only in the short run. Even if the improvement constitutes a substantial increase in cost, the growing adoption curve and product improvement cycle will eventually reduce costs and eliminate rough edges. The hybrid automobile is a good example. Toyota had to sell the original Prius vehicles at a small loss in order to prime the pump. They're still quite expensive, but are projected to be both affordable and competitive fairly soon, especially if the price of gas climbs again. Many computer related products and technologies are barely affordable on introduction, but rapidly become commodity items. I recall paying $3,000 for an HPIII laser printer in the early 1980's. Today, a comparable HP1500 series laser printer is $150. My first 1x cdrom drive was $500. Today, it's $35. If companies based their technology decision on the short run pricing, nothing would ever get introduced.
The same with usability. Lots of product are user hostile, barely functional, and unreliable on introduction. Most companies have trade in arrangements (also known as customer loyalty programs) and warranty programs for the loyal early adopters. If companies base their technology decisions on the viability of a first release product, nothing would ever be introduce.
Today's automobile and pens certainly qualify. However, I seem to recall reading about British laws requiring someone to run before a horseless carriage and carrying a red lantern. England was ahead of the US in horseless carriage design, but shot themselves in the foot because they listened to all the moaning and groaning from the technological conservatives. The noise doesn't let me sleep. It scares the horses. It's not reliable. And so on. We didn't do much better when some states decided to impose axle width standards to insure that the infernal horseless carriages would break a wheel in the ruts. Large cities passed ordinances banning auto before sun up which force milk delivery vehicle to switch to electric trucks. Of course those with vested interests in horse and railroad based transportation did their best to torpedo the horseless carriage. Yeah, I guess the huge improvement in usability wasn't apparent to those that hated its guts.
Fountain pen, not goose quill. As for the ball point pen, it too had its problems. Teacher complained that they ruined the students handwriting. Most of the early models leaked. I learned not to go flying with a ball point pen as it would surely leak on descent. Many people complained that it skipped, offered no clue that it was low on ink, some inks failed to dry, and would not work inverted. I was using a cartridge fountain pen well into college. I learned quickly that instructors preferred good hand writing and gave lousy grades to illegible scribbling. I had no problems with a fountain pen except when dealing with carbon paper forms.
Of course the ball point pen was a not so instant success. Introduced in 1935, it was not until about 1945 when the price was sufficiently low, for sale to climb. That's 10 years where nobody thought it was a great improvement:
It seems that an electric airplane is going to follow the same product cycle. There will be a initial introduction, a small group of fanatical proponents, some early disasters, regulatory resistance, financial wait and see, and slow adoption. Like I previously mumbled, about 10-50 years.
I guess so. Expecting the customer to change their ingrained habits and prejudices is German engineering. I would think it would be more like education, training, read-the-manual, and practice. I had some experience with operator resistance dealing with speech controlled hardware (HP RF test system). In order for it to work, the operator was required to speak in an even, controlled, and consistent manner. Most didn't or couldn't, even when it was clear that their job depended on their ability to adapt. Since the hardware was too expensive and limited to adapt to the speakers habits of the moment, we gave up and went back to a keyboard.
I have to renew my license. Might as well renew the ritual sacrifices.
I'm not suggesting cloning a war plane design for general aviation. I'm suggesting borrowing some of the technology used to stabilize fundamentally unstable military aircraft, and using it to allow creative GA airplane design. Much of the consumer technology we have received from the military and aerospace programs did not arrive in its original form. It was adapted, tweaked, commercialized, and sometimes declassified before it was incorporated into consumer products. Same with computer stabilization assistance (or whatever it's called) borrowed from the fundamentally unstable stealth airplanes.
As I mumbled, using the motors for yaw control isn't going to work by itself. Most flying wings use devices that create drag for control. I suspect a system where a little of both can be used. For example, mounting the motors on pylon and controlling its direction of thrust. Again, the addition of computers makes all the difference. When using multiple motors for control was first attempted, the control system was the usual cable and pulley arrangement. Without a mechanical nightmare of gears, cams, cogs, and such, to form a mechanical computah, it probably would be designated a bad idea. However, computer servo control can easily coordinate the motor power, relative direction, prop pitch, and control surfaces. Perhaps the idea should be revisited?
However, you bring up a good point. Using motors for directional control will have less of an effect at low airspeeds and low power. I guess that's where inducing drag for control will be needed.
Well, there's a big difference between a turboprop and an electric motor. The turboprop is a complexicated messy device, with lots of plumbing, magic boxes, and maintenance issues. An electric motor is comparatively simple.
Guessing again... It would seem that a turboprop or similar engine has a certain minimum complexity in order to function. Adding additional engines duplicated the complexity, making multi engine designs more complexicated than single engine designs.
However, an electric motor is a fairly simple device. All the complexity is in the control system and drivers, which can be centralized (and redundant). Adding additional engines does not geometrically increase the overall complexity.
Probably true. That what happens when one focuses on only one aspect of a system. Mr Lapin wants to optimize the computer part of the puzzle while neglecting almost everything else. I'm concentrating on fly by wire and the psychology of flying. You're concentrating on preserving existing technology, while taking a conservative position towards change in any form. We would make a great design team, that would probably kill each other off after the first meeting.
All I'm asking is that you keep an open mind to new ideas and techniques. At first glance, shoving a computah into a GA airplane is a waste of time because the existing technology is functional, reliable, and cheap. I agree so far. However, that computah offers the ability to add considerably to what can be done with the airplane. Active stabilization, directional motor control, hands off landing, GPS augmented visualization, and the usual glass cockpit features. By themselves, none of these are compelling justifications for computerizing an electric airplane. It's the 1% incremental improvement again. Do it 100 times, and you have a revolutionary improvement. Computers have a tendency to do that. Once you've "paid" for the computah, additional features and function come really cheap (mostly software).
I can't and you know it. No sane person designs a new airplane for immediate production. It becomes part of experimental aviation, where the bugs can be squashed, pilot feedback collected, and the design is optimized for eventual production. Although some airplanes have been introduced directly into production, they were done by established companies, with substantial resources. Mr Lapin does not have those benefits. Therefore, his initial attempt will be unique and probably a unflyable disaster. He will pick up the pieces, analyze the problems, and try again, and again, and again, until has something that will attract sufficient investors to justify production and meeting the necessary specifications.
Part 23 (Airworthiness)
I skimmed through a few sections and found plenty of requirements, specifications, and tests. Somehow, I can't seem to find the
*REASONS* for these requirements, specifications, and tests. I certainly would not expect the FAA to itemize the fatalities and crashes the inspired each requirement. It's easy enough to determine what's required, but kinda difficult to determine the reasons and logic.Probably more than 10 times. However, that's comparing the electric airplane with a typical small airplane. No way is an electric airplane going to have the payload, range, and endurance of a gasoline burner. It's going to be a flyweight and limited everything design that will more closely resemble a powered glider or ultralight, than a typical small airplane. Every technology has its optimum operating point. With electric airplanes, that point may be well below that of a gas burner.
However, what are you going to fly when gas prices go through the roof? Solar charged electrics might look much more interesting.
Hmmm.. My Verizon XV6700 runs my life: (somewhat obsolete) I've owned and maintained mobile phones since the days of mobile operators (before IMTS). Before that, it was phone patches. Other than decent analog FM audio, there's not much superior about the early mobile phones.
Speaking of early mobile telephones, methinks you might find my posting from 1997 somewhat amusing:
Agreed.
No thanks. I would like to keep the topic fairly close to electric airplanes and fly by wire.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
All the technologies you mention are fairly recent and evolving.
Aviation is over 100 years old and little to nothing has changed with subsonic flight technology or aerodynamics in about a half century; it is mature.
Oh, sure, the avionics are a hell of a lot better, but about the only "new" technology in the basic airplane is composite construction and that is over 30 years old and well matured as well.
Apples and oranges; I'm talking about the usability and you are rambling on about perceptions.
Yeah, the ball point pen had development problems.
So did the wooden pencil, so what?
All fantasy without an order of magnitude improvement in batteries.
German engineering at it's finest.
If the system had been able to understand a normal speaking voice, it would have been and improvement.
Forcing to band aid the inadequacy of the system is asinine and doomed to failure as you found out.
Sorry, I'm not blood thirsty enough to want to see people die just to satisfy some pulled from the ass techno-whiz idea.
OK, what would be the point of making a GA aircraft so uncontrollable and unstable it would need technology to fly?
The point of it in military aircraft is so they are highly manueverable in dog fights.
I haven't heard of any GA aircraft involved in dog fights.
Maybe GA should abandon BRS technology and instead use the military technology of ejection seats.
How about arrestor hooks instead of making runways long enough so they aren't required?
Let's not forget to add some air to air missles in case someone cuts you off on short final.
Armour around the pilot? The military uses it, we gotta have it.
Oh yeah, stealth technology is a must have for a Cessna class airplane.
Be my guest Wilber, and actually flying wings use changing lift to provide directional control.
A turboprop is actually simpler than a piston engine, much more reliable and has less maintenance.
The light is beginning to come on, but you aren't there yet
Off course again.
No, I am not "concentrating on preserving" anything except human life.
You have a solution in search of a problem to solve.
There are already processors in modern airplanes doing usefull things.
All I hear being proposed is more processors doing uneccessary things.
No sane person has done otherwise for about 75 years now.
The techonologies and engineering techniques are well known.
But that is just avoiding the point.
Part 23 exists to keep people from becoming dead, not to stifle creativity.
Subsonic experimental aviation ended about 75 years ago; we've figured it out.
Lapin will never build anything and if through some miricle he did, I'm willing to bet that his construction would be so slipshod the FAA inspector (yes, home built experimentals get inspected for basic airworthyness) would declare the thing a public hazard.
One more time.
All federal requlations have a discussion period BEFORE adoption.
The discussions are public record, though things from before 1950 and the Federal Records Act may be a bit sketchy.
Then it is not a practical airplane, just a toy.
To who and what would you put the solar generated electricity into if the battery technology doesn't exist?
They made and received telephone calls. Everything after that was above and beyond making telephome calls.
Practical electric airplanes are fantasy until battaries improve by at least an order of magnitude. You migt as well discuss impulse engines and Star Trek shuttles.
Fly by wire has been around for decades and no one who knows about GA aircraft has yet to see any reason to use it in GA normal category airplanes.
The ONLY place where you might ever have even a slim chance of seeing a fly by wire system in a GA airplane is in a competition acrobatic category airplane as that is the only place where such a system MAY be usefull.
-- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
There is already sufficient history in this thread and elsewhere that a significant percentage of pilots have preemptively rejected any claim to anything that might be new.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
You're an ignoramus.
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