Fifty Years of the Cooper-Harper Scale

摘要

The year 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of a seminal document, The Use of Pilot Rating in the Evaluation of Aircraft Handling Qualities, by George E. Cooper and Robert P. Harper, Jr. Despite taking a meager 52 pages to tell its story, NASA TN D-5153 manages to capture the essence of piloted evaluation of handling qualities. The Cooper-Harper handling qualities rating scale has withstood numerous attempts at improvement, simplification, or modernization, and even total replacement. With its continued use, we have learned that there are shortcomings in the scale, and that several of the terms used are not well-defined. Certainly our interpretation of the scale has evolved over the past five decades. Yet it remains the standard tool for eliciting pilot opinion on aircraft handling qualities. This paper reviews the evolution of the usage of the scale, discusses its strengths and weaknesses, and demonstrates the value of the scale to handling-qualities evaluation for the foreseeable future.