Airbus Tech Support Desk is OPEN

derg

derg

Apparently a "terse" writer
Staff member
So since I’m doing nothing but sitting on my butt for a week, apart from working on getting the main page back up, “The Airbus Answer Desk” is open.

I know nothing about the CEO, but 319/320/321 CEO w/Thales with minor Honeywell experience, I gotchuuuu.
 
Derg said:
So since I’m doing nothing but sitting on my butt for a week, apart from working on getting the main page back up, “The Airbus Answer Desk” is open.

I know nothing about the CEO, but 319/320/321 CEO w/Thales with minor Honeywell experience, I gotchuuuu.
Click to expand...

not an airbus guy, but I’ve been curious about what all the control “laws” are, as I learn more about the engineering world in career 2.0 I’d be interested in understanding the design of the flight controls and particular if you think these choices were “good”
 
ppragman said:
not an airbus guy, but I’ve been curious about what all the control “laws” are, as I learn more about the engineering world in career 2.0 I’d be interested in understanding the design of the flight controls and particular if you think these choices were “good”
Click to expand...

I’ll keep it super simple:

Normal Law: Airspeed protections, overbank protections, sidestick requests roll “rate” and pitch “load”.

Alternate Law: You’re having some flight control computer issues, so you may lose some protections because you’ve lost some redundancies, it’s basically a transitional control state to get you back to Normal Law

Direct Law: The stick directly commands pitch and roll…. Basically, but there are some caveats.

Here is a “MS Paint and FrontPage is kewl” look at some of the laws: Airbus Flight Control Laws
 
I'm headed to Airbus school in a couple of weeks to start with a ULCC. Going in with a blank mind because I know it's much different from anything I've flown. Most of my time is in classic Gulfstreams and the mighy ERJ-145. What would you say are the biggest design philosophy drivers in the Airbus and are there any tips you would give on how to understand it well? What are the most common issues you encounter when giving IOE?

I asked one of the chief pilots during my interview what he wishes new hires would stop doing the most and he answered "stop trying to fly it like an RJ".
 
luke3 said:
I'm headed to Airbus school in a couple of weeks to start with a ULCC. Going in with a blank mind because I know it's much different from anything I've flown. Most of my time is in classic Gulfstreams and the mighy ERJ-145. What would you say are the biggest design philosophy drivers in the Airbus and are there any tips you would give on how to understand it well? What are the most common issues you encounter when giving IOE?

I asked one of the chief pilots during my interview what he wishes new hires would stop doing the most and he answered "stop trying to fly it like an RJ".
Click to expand...
It turns out this stuff (PDF Target) is good advice for every airplane, not just Fifi, but especially Fifi:
 
Go in with an open mind.

I tell people that I went from the comfortable, plush world of the 767 to the 330 and it kicked my ass because I kept trying not make it do 767 things. And that my wife, who isn’t a pilot, would have had an easier time in training because she would be ‘learning‘ fresh instead of ‘unlearning‘ a previous design philosophy and trying to swiftly replace that with new information.

The most common issues I encounter with students is trying to fly the 320 like the last jet they’ve flown.

220 pilots will basically try to yank the tail of the jet off on takeoff. 737 pilots unnecessarily press buttons trying ’smooth things out’ (which is a mistake), Embraer pilots do the best, 757/767 pilots have problems with the Thales MCDU.

Most of all, when I have a student, I tell them “Let the Airbus be an Airbus. It may do some weird things but learn to balance immediately reacting with understanding why it’s doing it”

And every time you choose or change a mode, ask yourself, “What do you get, what do you lose?”

Here’s an example. In a high cost-index cruise, it gets a little slow and then a little fast so people get frustrated and go into ”selected speed”. That’s fine, it will do a good job at maintaining your exact Mach speed. So you “got” better speed control. What you’ve ‘lost’ are the efficiencies of a soft autothrust mode like cruise control in a car. Selected speed is going to be more aggressive with the autothrust, managed speed is a little more chill and fuel efficient.

Also, colors in the airbus are EVERYTHING.

Magenta: Machine
Blue: You
White: Armed (or sometimes ‘ignored’ if it’s a constraint/restriction

Crap, I just wrote a book. Sorry!
 
Derg said:
I’ll keep it super simple:

Normal Law: Airspeed protections, overbank protections, sidestick requests roll “rate” and pitch “load”.

Alternate Law: You’re having some flight control computer issues, so you may lose some protections because you’ve lost some redundancies, it’s basically a transitional control state to get you back to Normal Law

Direct Law: The stick directly commands pitch and roll…. Basically, but there are some caveats.

Here is a “MS Paint and FrontPage is kewl” look at some of the laws: Airbus Flight Control Laws
Click to expand...
Very cool, thanks.
 
I want to understand some of the cool extra stuff that FBW gives you like GS Mini and soft GA. I kinda understand the basic FBW stuff like envelope protection etc
 
Also all this tech and why don’t we have synth vis yet? Especially in stuff like the 220 (I know it’s the Cannabus but still)
 
Because, for some reason, airlines don’t look outside of their own technological sandbox very often.

I wish we would send a group over to NBAA every year to see exactly how far the passenger airlines are behind in avionics tech.

AIrines: “Woo hoo! Look! CPDLC! And on some jets, we can, get this, SEE the ADS positional data on other aircraft! We fancy!”

Corporate Aviation:
6CE108EA-D651-440F-88C0-F7B4E6D22BFD.gif
 
Derg said:
Because, for some reason, airlines don’t look outside of their own technological sandbox very often.

I wish we would send a group over to NBAA every year to see exactly how far the passenger airlines are behind in avionics tech.

AIrines: “Woo hoo! Look! CPDLC! And on some jets, we can, get this, SEE the ADS positional data on other aircraft! We fancy!”

Corporate Aviation:
View attachment 62464
Click to expand...
I want Roci flight deck shiz up front
Lock torpedoes and fire a PDC burst on my mark!
….what captain Taylor means to say is todays inflight movie will be….

Radar shows a drive plume coming out of above the ecliptic 10 o’clock!
That’s the ah….that’s UAL 1290 out of Tampa sir

get me a tightbeam to Ceres control!
You’re, ah, you’re up on Atlanta center sir
 
Derg said:
Crap, I just wrote a book. Sorry!
Click to expand...
Not at all it's greatly appreciated

Derg said:
And every time you choose or change a mode, ask yourself, “What do you get, what do you lose?”

Here’s an example. In a high cost-index cruise, it gets a little slow and then a little fast so people get frustrated and go into ”selected speed”. That’s fine, it will do a good job at maintaining your exact Mach speed. So you “got” better speed control. What you’ve ‘lost’ are the efficiencies of a soft autothrust mode like cruise control in a car. Selected speed is going to be more aggressive with the autothrust, managed speed is a little more chill and fuel efficient
Click to expand...
This is exactly the point of view I was hoping for. It will help give a frame of reference while studying and is a great way to look at the additional automation that it will have over what I'm used to
 
Roger Roger said:
I want to understand some of the cool extra stuff that FBW gives you like GS Mini and soft GA. I kinda understand the basic FBW stuff like envelope protection etc
Click to expand...

Soft GA is a trust function, unrelated to FBW. Going into TOGA does a whole lot of system queuing stuff to get you set for landing again. But in many scenarios you dint need all that thrust. Soft GA just allows you to come right out of TOGA and into CLIMB even if you are below the acceleration altitude (where you'd normally pull the thrust levers back). In CLIMB during a go around, the engines will give you enough thrust to maintain the required terps gradient.

GS mini is just an inertia management tool. It looks at your current headwind (as pulled from the groundspeed/track vs airspeed/heading) and the planned headwind on the ground at landing (ad entered into the FMS), and modulates the target speed in an attempt to keep a minimum ground speed during the approach. It's something that happens behind the scenes, as long as the speed is managed.

@Derg how many times do you click to disengage the autopilot?
 
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