On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 08:13:04 -0800, Mary Shafer
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Jan 2004 16:33:47 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

Well, it was common for all high performance aircraft of the period to
have stability augmentation. Some had single axis while others had
full three-axis stab aug. It wasn't as fully in-the-loop as todays FBW
systems, but definitely added control inputs to reduce pilot workload
on inherently unstable systems.

The F-104 and F-4 had dampers in roll and yaw. Maybe in pitch, too,
(I don't have a Dash-1 around), but I know when I flew in the F-104 we
turned the roll and yaw dampers off for a little while. We also shut
down the dampers in the F-4E when I flew in it almost two decades
later.

The F-4 had three axis stab aug; pitch, roll and yaw. It was standard
procedure to turn the roll aug off before any high G manuevering such
as combat or ACM training. The roll aug caused very jerky movements
during rolls because of the aileron/rudder interplay. Rather than a
roll, you flew a multi-sided polygon. ;-)



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8