Melbourne FL airport -- approach

"Bob Moore" wrote

But then, I had spent most of my 10
years of Navy flying (P-2 P-3) at 100'-200' over water both night
and IMC. Hand flying a P-2 Neptune for 12 hours at 100' at night
could very well test one's mettle.

Did you have a radar altimeter, or any other means of fine tuning your
altitude, other than barometric altimeter?
--
Jim in NC

"Bob Moore" wrote

Nope! But we did shutdown the "outboard" engines. :-)

Yeah, you wanted to save the "outboard engine" for when you were "on" the
water, for trolling (fishing) and such, right? ducking, running
--
Jim in NC

"Morgans" wrote

Did you have a radar altimeter, or any other means of fine
tuning your altitude, other than barometric altimeter?

YES. And in the P-3 Orion, we had a "control wheel steering"
mode for the autopilot that would allow us to lock the altitude
hold function to the radar altimeter and just "drive" the ailerons
with the control wheel. Wherever you put the control wheel, the
autopilot kept it there. Controlwheel steering also worked for the
elevator axis if the altitude hold function was not engaged.

Bob

"Bob Moore" wrote in message . 122...
"Morgans" wrote

Did you have a radar altimeter, or any other means of fine
tuning your altitude, other than barometric altimeter?

YES. And in the P-3 Orion, we had a "control wheel steering"
mode for the autopilot that would allow us to lock the altitude
hold function to the radar altimeter and just "drive" the ailerons
with the control wheel. Wherever you put the control wheel, the
autopilot kept it there. Controlwheel steering also worked for the
elevator axis if the altitude hold function was not engaged.

Bob


....and that is what put that L1011 into the swamp down in Florida way back when. They bumped the yoke which put the
plane in a very gradual descent ~100 FPM while they were all looking at the landing gear light...
--
Dan DeVillers
http://www.ameritech.net/users/ddevillers/start.html


..

".Blueskies." wrote in message

...and that is what put that L1011 into the swamp down in Florida way back
when.

Well, technically, yes, but no one could ever definitively explain how the
change from Command mode to CWS was effected. The true culprits were the
design criteria in effect at the time 35+ years ago. In today's aircraft,
1) a substantial control input force (something on the order of 20lbs, iirc)
is required to disengage the autopilot, and 2) a loud tone sounds upon
autopilot disengagement from whatever source. These two design factors have
been incorporated at least in part because of the EA401 crash.