A ground simulation experiment was conducted on the Ames Research Center Flight Simulator for AdvancedAircraft to investigate the influence and interaction of flight-control system, flight-director display, and crewloading situation on helicopter flying qualities during terminal-area operations in instrument conditions. Six levels of control complexity, ranging from angular rate damping to velocity-augmented longitudinal and vertical axes, were implemented on a representative helicopter model. The six levels of augmentation were examined with display variations consisting of raw elevation and azimuth data only and of raw data plus one-, two-, and threecue flight directors. Crew-loading situations simulated for the control-display combinations were dual-pilot operation (full attention available for control), and single-pilot operation (representative auxiliary tasks of navigation, communications, and decisionmaking). Four pilots performed a total of 150 evaluations of combinations of these parameters for a representative microwave landing system (MLS) approach task. Pilot rating results indicated the existence of a control display trade-off for ratings of satisfactory, whereas ratings of adequate-but-unsatisfactory depended primarily on the control system; the control system required for ratings of adequate-but-unsatisfactory was clearly more complex for the single-pilot situation than that for the dualpilot situation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.