FADEC = complex

Morgans writes:

OK, I did read that as altitude. Score, you - 1, Everyone
else 5,000,000

I wasn't keeping score. I just like to talk about aviation.

--
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Neil Gould writes:

The pilot is *never* "allowed to lose awareness of the
aspect that has been removed".

Of course he is.

If he turns on the autopilot and tells it to hold a heading, the
autopilot will do so (in many cases) by moving the ailerons without
any intervention on his part. Unless he is holding the yoke, he has
no awareness of how the ailerons are being moved by the autopilot.
Indeed, the whole value of the autopilot resides in the fact that it
can adjust the ailerons without his help, and he need not know their
exact positions. Without the autopilot, he'd have to be continuously
aware of this, which is a non-trivial task. The autopilot frees him
from this task, reducing fatigue and providing more time for other
tasks, if needed.

The flip side is that the pilot may not be aware of any unusual moves
that the autopilot is making. If the thrust from the engines is
becoming asymmetrical, the pilot may not realize it, because the
autopilot adjusts to compensate for the difference in thrust. By the
time the autopilot reaches the limit of its capabilities and
disconnects, the adjustments it has made may be very extreme, and the
pilot may be so surprised by the sudden change in the attitude of the
aircraft that he cannot recover his awareness quickly enough to avoid
an accident.

When automation is used, the pilot is still responsible for verifying that
the automation is operating correctly. This is not difficult.

It is not necessary for the most part, and that's precisely why the
automation exists. If he had to verify it continuously, it would
serve no purpose. And if he does not verify it continuously, there's
a chance it may do things of which he is unaware. The smart pilot
occasionally checks to see if all is well, but he cannot and should
not watch continuously--if he wants to do that, he may as well shut
off the automation.

If, one day, you find yourself in a position to get into a real airplane,
please first locate the instructor from the "my first solo" thread and
engage him so that he can knock some sense into you before you kill
yourself.

My interest in procedures, rules, checklists, and general rigor in
operating complex systems makes me quite safe as an operator of any
vehicle. The ones you have to worry about are the cowboys and the
testosterone-soaked teens.

--
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Morgans writes:

Oh, is that so?

I wouldn't say it if it weren't so.

--
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Morgans writes:

What type of catastrophic result?

I don't know; if you can predict a catastrophic result, you can avoid
the catastrophe.

What would you expect the software to anticipate?

I don't have specific expectations. One cannot really anticipate
everything, but the better the software, the more possibilities it is
designed to handle.

What exactly does FADEC control in a air cooled, opposed cylinder, internal
combustion airplane engine, anyway? Do you know?

That depends on the design of the FADEC, and of the engine.

Surely with your vast knowlege of writing systems like FADEC, an occurance like
an oil pump failure would be easy for you to anticipate.

I haven't written FADEC software, and every module is different,
anyway.

--
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Greg Farris wrote:
In article . com,
says...

I worked in Intelligence and for NSA.

This gets better and better!:
Was that in the "embedded" period - or still rebuilding car engines?

*laughing* Yeah, it's interesting isn't it? There's not much I
haven't done in 50+ years. I used to say that I"ve been a tinker,
tailor, soldier, spy. All are true. I worked as a mechanic and body
repairer/painter. I've faced down a white tiger alone in the Korean
DMZ, got shot at, rewrote tactical Intelligence gathering procedures,
and worked with the most secret NSA equipment. I was promoted for
making a secret project succeed that stopped the Soviets in a certain
region. My first computer, I designed and handbuilt in 1979 from chips
and wires. It had 4K and I wrote 3D rotation and voice analysis
programs on it in assembly language. I was a sysop on CompuServe back
in the early days when it cost $1,000 a month to support 16kbps
uploads. Later I wrote a book on an embedded operating system that's
used in satellites and military apps, and gave seminars that were
infamous for their attendance. I've written many types of realtime
drivers and applications. I designed and programmed electronic casino
equipment that many of you probably have wasted money on. I was head
of one of the first labs designing settop boxes. For the past 13
years, I've had a quarter mill yearly income as one of the top embedded
systems designers. Many of the friends I grew up with are high
officials and state attorneys in NC. I've also watched the Exorcist
about 150 times and it just gets funnier each time I see it! (oops,
sorry, that was Betelguese ;-)

Last Christmas I was diagnosed with a vicious cancer and given four
months to live. Much chemo, rad and a rather brutal operation that
removed my esophagus later, I'm still around.

In any case, yes sir, I have a little experience here and there, and I
really don't like people who attack others.

Kev

In article . com,
says...


In any case, yes sir, I have a little experience here and there, and I
really don't like people who attack others.


Are you always such a snotty child?

The belligerence here is completely atypical for this group.
It is the direct result of an injurious and defamatory attitude championed
by your protege and yourself.

It is also atypical to blow one's own horn here. There are quite a few
contributors here (fewer now, as they are being driven away) of
significant accomplishment - often in fields of endeavor related to the
purported topic of discussion (aviation). It could just be that you would
defend Mxsmanic less vociferously if you were to take full measure of the
number and quality of people he has insulted here.

I am sorry for your illness, but this is not related to the topic. I doubt
your sincerity in any desire for constructive discourse, while your
protege has clearly demonstrated a disingenuous desire to disrupt and
destroy, taking vicarious pleasure in watching the whole group
unravel.When there's nothing left (very soon), he will move to another
group and suck the life out of it. Will you follow him there?

Greg Farris wrote:
In article . com,
says...
The belligerence here is completely atypical for this group.
It is the direct result of an injurious and defamatory attitude championed
by your protege and yourself.

He's not my protege. He simply sounds like a older man with really
poor discussion skills. But injurious? No, don't think so.

It could just be that you would
defend Mxsmanic less vociferously if you were to take full measure of the
number and quality of people he has insulted here.

My (and others') point has always been, that we haven't seem him
directly insult anyone. He's argued, yes, but never attacked anyone
as others have attacked him. Worse, the ones who attack him (and it's
always the same group) also attack anyone who dares question those kind
of gang tactics.

The only problem I see with his postings is with those who feel the
need to constantly post negative responses. Since he obviously doesn't
let that affect him, then all they're doing is clogging up the
newsgroup for others. Shut up, let him and others post, and we'd be
in much better shape. It was actually going pretty well there for a
few weeks until the gang spoke up again.

In other words, I think Jim in NC is taking the really wrong road.
It's just going to make pilots look worse and worse.

Regards, Kev

No. Boeing used fly by wire at LEAST a decade before Airbus.

Karl
"Curator" N185KG



"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Thomas Borchert writes:

Well, if it does, neither FADEC nor FBW are it. Google "any modern jet
aircraft" for the former and "Boeing 777" for the latter.

Airbus used fly-by-wire long before Boeing did. It is true that now
that Boeing is beginning to include some FBW features, Airbus has to
look for something else ... such as aircraft size.

--
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In article .com,
"Kev" wrote:

If there'd been no FADEC, all that would've happened is that the pilot
would've seen a pump failure light and landed. (This aspect is covered
in other reports.)

FADEC wasn't the cause. The problem was the failure of the engineering
team not addressing basic safety considerations like system states during
reset/startup.

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Each automation system removes some aspect of the pilot workload. An
unavoidable consequence of this is that the pilot is also allowed to
lose awareness of the aspect that has been removed (if he were not,
there'd be no point in the automation).

A corollary statement to the above is that when a driver sets the cruise-
control in his car, he no longer needs to monitor his speed, and will fail to
notice if the speed in his car begins to change or if he has blows out a
tire. Is this what you do when you turn on the cruise control in your car?

And automation does not require monitoring; that's why it is called
automation. And if it did require monitoring, it would serve no
purpose. The purpose of automation is to make things automatic--that
is, to remove the need for monitoring and intervention.

Reduce, not remove...

From Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1):

au-to-ma-tion [aw-tuh-mey-shuhn] –noun
1. the technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by
highly automatic means, as by electronic devices, reducing human intervention
to a minimum.
2. a mechanical device, operated electronically, that functions
automatically, without continuous input from an operator.

The purpose of automation is to reduce the amount of human effort and/or time
required to manage a system. But the system still needs to be managed.

In the case of an autopilot, all of the instruments that a pilot uses to
monitor altitude, attitude, course, and direction are still effective whether
the autopilot is engaged or not. When the autopilot is off, the pilot must
monitor and provide input to the controls to ensure the plane continues to
fly at the desired altitude, attitude, course, and direction. When the
autopilot is on, the autopilot provides input to those controls, and monitors
the instruments as well. However, it is still the pilot's responsibility to
monitor the situation as well, and not to simply lay his seat back, go to
sleep, and become the passenger.