R

rjtjrt

Well Known Member
Are any of the manufacturers thinking of including a V bar flight director on their display?
There was some referrence to this in previous thread -http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=27732&highlight=Flight+Director
I would be interested in how many here would want this as an option?
John
 
John,
The only one I have seen so far is Dynon's 76 that hasn't been released yet. I am just ASSUMING that the FD on their AP is for Flight Director. Others may have it, but I haven't seen anything in writing.
 
Most of what I've seen from the EFIS manufacturers is heading towards highway in the sky type set-ups. Not sure why, I prefer the V or even crosshair FDs. I spent a bit of time at the Dynon booth during OSH, and wasn't sure the rep even understood what I meant by "Flight Director" after several attempts to ask about it/their plans.

Oh well...


Joe
 
We know what a flight director is, I promise ;) We have 7 people working at OSH, all from different specialties at the company, so not everyone will know everything. Sorry you didn't get a more complete answer there.

You can't really do a FD without an AP. Or maybe more specifically, once you have a FD, you've got a huge portion of the AP done. The whole point of a FD is an AP where the human is the servo, right?

My personal opinion is that HITS is better because it gives you future information about what you will be doing, and lets you use all of that info to stabilize the plane the way you want. A FD won't show you that your requested flight path is about to take you into a mountain or that a procedure turn will start in about 1 mile. It's purely a "DO THIS NOW" kind of display, and I think that if HITS was a possibility back in 1940, a FD would have never been invented.

That being said, we've got a FD button on our AP76 for our current generation of products, and do expect to do a FD on the next gen too. But as I mentioned, the whole point of a FD is that it follows the way you have an AP set up, so I doubt we'll give you a FD unless you have purchased our AP. I don't know of any planes out there that have a FD that is decoupled from the AP system.
 
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A flight director is not necessarily dependent or locked to an AP. In my experience, I would describe it more as dependent on flight guidance input, whether that is a selected altitude, heading, course (VOR, GPS, LOC), vertical path (GS or vert speed). The steering commands are based upon the guidance selected, with the intention of meeting that "defined parameter.

You dial in a new altitude, and the FD directs the pitch change necessary to get there, level off, then hold level flight. Has nothing to do with whether the AP is on or even installed.

I see it more as an intermediate step between flying around on raw data and fully coupled flight on an autopilot. In fact, that is the way I/we use it everyday at my airline...until the autopilot is engaged. Then the FD is irrelevant, since it simply mimics or displays what the AP is doing. From an engineering standpoint, it may be true that to get to the point of having a FD an AP must be present. But from an end user point of view--not theoretical, in the development lab scenarios--they simply aren't co-dependent

HITS is not the end all-be all solution to instrument flying. IMO, it fosters a lack of proficiency in raw data instrument flight and reduces the whole thing to a video game (and I'm not some WWII vet, good old days, "walked uphill both ways to flight school in the snow" kind of guy...I even have an Xbox 360 and no kids!) I will say, I found your display better/more comfortable than the "concentric boxes" I've seen--and been put to sleep by.

I'm sure standing in that booth and getting pounded with "but I want this" inputs for a whole week must get real old, real fast. Maybe I didn't ask the correct questions at OSH, but I too know what a FD is, I promise.:rolleyes:

Joe
 
Check out TruTraks new EFIS. It will have a Flight Director but not sure when it will be available. Give them a call.
 
jferraro16 said:
A flight director is not necessarily dependent or locked to an AP. In my experience, I would describe it more as dependent on flight guidance input, whether that is a selected altitude, heading, course (VOR, GPS, LOC), vertical path (GS or vert speed). The steering commands are based upon the guidance selected, with the intention of meeting that "defined parameter.

You dial in a new altitude, and the FD directs the pitch change necessary to get there, level off, then hold level flight. Has nothing to do with whether the AP is on or even installed.

I see it more as an intermediate step between flying around on raw data and fully coupled flight on an autopilot. In fact, that is the way I/we use it everyday at my airline...until the autopilot is engaged. Then the FD is irrelevant, since it simply mimics or displays what the AP is doing. From an engineering standpoint, it may be true that to get to the point of having a FD an AP must be present. But from an end user point of view--not theoretical, in the development lab scenarios--they simply aren't co-dependent

HITS is not the end all-be all solution to instrument flying. IMO, it fosters a lack of proficiency in raw data instrument flight and reduces the whole thing to a video game (and I'm not some WWII vet, good old days, "walked uphill both ways to flight school in the snow" kind of guy...I even have an Xbox 360 and no kids!) I will say, I found your display better/more comfortable than the "concentric boxes" I've seen--and been put to sleep by.

I'm sure standing in that booth and getting pounded with "but I want this" inputs for a whole week must get real old, real fast. Maybe I didn't ask the correct questions at OSH, but I too know what a FD is, I promise.:rolleyes:

Joe
Click to expand...

Hi Joe,

The Phantom had a flight director, at least for the ILS approaches and certain attack profiles. It worked dandy, but you had to remember it didn't tell you anything about power settings or optimal speed (which was significantly affected in that plane by remaining fuel & stores).

I could make the same argument about FDs that you made about HITS - "IMO, it fosters a lack of proficiency in raw data instrument flight and reduces the whole thing to a video game..." The whole pilotage thing about setting an attitude and airspeed, observing your descent rate and drift, making small changes - that goes out the window with an FD.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have as a backup to the autopilot - but I would tend to put it in the "nice to have" category, particularly if the same instrument already provides HITS.

Opinions will certainly vary!

Cheers,

Bill
 
AFS has flight director

The advanced deck Efis from AFS has a very nice flight director. I saw a demo of it this week at their shop.

Fishguy
 
The next software release for all of our EFIS units will have the flight director.

Rob Hickman
Advanced Flight Systems
 
FD vs Hits

I've been debating myself recently over which I would prefer, FD or Hits. I have very limited experiece flying both, and they each have their advantages. Hits does a nice job of creating visual image of your desired flight path. If the goal, however is to reduce pilot workload, a good flight director is better at giving immediate control input guidance. This is my current opinion, subject to change with more experiece!

Fishguy
 
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