A Flight Investigation of Control,Display,and Guidance Requirements for Decelerating Descending VTOL Instrument Transitions using the X-22A Variable Stability Aircraft. Volume I. Technical Discussion and Results.

摘要

The third flight research program using the variable stability X-22A aircraft was undertaken to investigate control, display, and guidance requirements for VTOL instrument transitions. The primary purpose of the experiment was to provide meaningful data related to the interaction of aircraft control system and displayed information characteristics on pilot rating and performance during a steep decelerating descending transition from a representative forward velocity (100 Kt) to the hover completely under instrument conditions. Thirty-eight in-flight evaluations were performed of combinations of five generic display presentations, ranging from position-information-only to four-axis control directors, and five levels of control augmentation systems, ranging from rate-augmentation-only to decoupled longitudinal and vertical velocity responses and automatic configuration changes. In addition, new guidance developments of fundamental importance to VTOL instrument terminal area operations, including an Independent Thrust Vector Inclination Command (ITVIC) and a procedure for automatically switching between airspeed and ground speed tracking to account for headwinds and crosswinds, were conceived, designed, and demonstrated during the experiment.