Auto-Pilot Flashcards
What is the purpose of the Automatic Flight Control Systems (AFCS) / Autopilot (AP)?
To relieve the human pilot and other members of the flight crew the tedious duty of keeping the aircraft on course for periods of many hours.
All autopilot systems can be narrowed down to providing at least one main function, which is what?
Stability
For an autopilot to maintain this stability, it must:
Know the pilots desired aircraft attitude
and
Know the actual aircraft attitude
Basic autopilot system can be divided into four parts:
Sensors
Computer
Controls
Loads
The controller turns the autopilot on and off. It also provides what?
System inputs
(air data, radio, course info, heading info, etc)
What are the 3 main surfaces that the Loads move?
Pitch Servo
Roll Servo
Yaw Servo
Instead of having to calculate for themselves from five or six different instruments, a pilot can navigate and make landing approaches simply by:
“zeroing” or centering two cross-pointers on the indicator.
The Flight Director System (FDS) does not control what?
The aircraft’s attitude
In simple form the FDS is designed to provide what?
computed steering commands to the command bars of the ADI and/or to an autopilot system.
A typical Flight Director System can be divided into what four parts?
Sensors
Computer
Controls
Loads
FD mode selector tells the computer what?
which raw data to use, depending on pilot mode preference.
ADI command bar displays what?
Horizontal and Vertical Cues (+)
What is the EI Pickoff?
a signal generating device used to develop the corrective signals from the gyros that sense attitude deviations.
What is the advantage of EI Pickoffs?
they are frictionless so very little mechanical force is present to restrict the gyro
Autopilot is made of what elements?
Error Sensing
Correction
Follow-up
Command
