Speedbrake Lever...

[SwissCharles]

Hi all,

Currently I am building the electro mechanical part of the speed brakes (as it looks, I will be using a real TQ).

Now for the pilots flying the queen or the maintenance pros working on it I do have a question:

On the real airplane when in flight, can one pull the speed brake lever further aft than 'flight detent' ?
- is that mechanically prevented? Or
- can one pull, but nothing happens except perhaps a warning?

Thanks for your input!

Charles
near LFSB

[Hardy Heinlin]

Hi,

this is the speedbrake flight detent lever lock. This is an electrical lock, hence it needs power. You can find the power source and the CB grid coords on page 214, in short: it's powered by DC bus 4, and the CB for this specific lock is on P7 at G7. Just pull this CB, and you can pull the lever beyond the flight detent position.

What you get in PSX is the same effect you get in real life.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[SwissCharles]

Ahhh .. I see!

So I will enable a solenoid for this flight detent lever lock being powered by said DC Bus and 'covered' by this CB.

Thanks Hardy for this clarification - amazing stuff!

What in heaven will happen when one goes to pull said CB  :twisted: and then pull that Speed Brake Lever all the way back in flight ...


Charles

[Hardy Heinlin]

You don't need to look at the electrical system. Here's your friend:

Qi168="SpdBrkFltDet"; Mode=XECON; Min=0; Max=1;

Just monitor Qi168: when its value is 1, your hardware solendoid should lock the flight detend position.

Qi168 already implies system specific consequences (bus failure, certain CBs pulled, PSEU status etc.).


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[SwissCharles]

Hardy,

I shall repeat a hundred times "Thou shalt not reinvent the wheel when everything haveth been put there already!!!!"

I really need to dig in to the variables now.

Having completed the electro mechanical parts of the parking brake system I need to check for those too in order to integrate the system's specifics...

Thanks for clarifying that and pointing me in the right direction.

Have a nice weekend!

Charles
near very sunny LFSB

[SwissCharles]

Hi Guys,
Follow up question here re. position sensing of speed brake lever.
[size=8](should I have better posted these questions over in the Accessories section? - mods feel free to move and sorry about this!)[/size]

From the docs I gather, that the position of the speed brake lever is held or given in variable Qh388="SpdBrkLever" Position. It's value range is given as Min=0    Max=800.

Now, since this SpdBrkLever does have 4 distinct positions for DN / ARM / FLIGHT DETENT / UP , I do have to define these positions as lever angles, is that right?
If so, can anyone specify the correct angles for said definite positions?

So, in order to feed the lever's actual position back into PSX (I am going from a real TQ due to arrive here in about a month's time    )  I am not going to use position switches affixed at these 4 positions but going through a potentiometer which gives a value of 800 at full travel. Is this right?

As I will be motorizing the lever myself, I will never the less add these switches to the positions the lever will go to automagically, OK? This would be, depending on other conditions and as stated in the Aerowinx Operations Manual:
- From DN to UP
- From UP to DN
- From ARM to UP

Additional question, I didn't find an answer for by myself: The speed brake logic depends on the Air/Ground switching. Now for the life of me, I couldn't find a variable holding this info. I've searched the variable-file up and down but alas...

As it looks, I will need this info to drive the speed brake lever too. Amongst others, blocking the speed brake lever at FLIGHT DETENT when airborne...

Or ist this another case of "Thou shalt not reinvent the wheel when everything haveth been put there already!!!!"  :oops:


Thanks for bearing with me during these first steps at interfacing hadrware to PSX.

Any help most appreciated!

Charles near LFSB

[Hardy Heinlin]

Hi Charles,

(800 refers to 80° lever angle.)

It's all correct what you are gathering for your model -- except for the air-ground stuff: You should not look at the air-ground signal, you should look at the actual lever angle servo commands coming from PSX.

These servo commands depend on many parameters, not only on the air-ground system. The servo moves the lever forward and backward, not only backward. It depends on certain electrical conditions, it may fail ... it may even fail during the movement ... etc.

You should just use the lever angle value from PSX to drive your hardware angle.

Design example: When your hardware angle disagrees with PSX's virtual angle by more than, say, 5° for more than, say, 300 milliseconds, then you should drive your servo until your lever agrees with the commanded angle.

It's similar to the autothrottle interfaces. You should always inject your hardware angle value into PSX. PSX will follow you. But when PSX's servo activates, PSX will move its own way. In that moment, a large disagreement will occur which you can detect as a servo action, in which case you should activate your servo too. You could even drive your servo when loading a situ file, to reset a situ also hardware-wise.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[SwissCharles]

Hi Hardy,

Thanks for your prompt reponse!

So this is a pure master/slave ops.

I read the value of variable Qh388="SpdBrkLever" Position and feed this into my speed brake lever drive. And vice versa when I am moving the lever myself I feed the lever angle into said variable.

The only other thing needed - as you wrote erlier ist variable Qi168="SpdBrkFltDet" which already does honour all the systems variable aspects incl. air/ground et al...

Is it really this easy??!!!

Anybody got any recommendations re a suitable interface board to pick up and drive geared dc motors?

Thanks again - I am lerning a lot even though I am apparently still trying to reinvent the wheel  :oops:

Charles

[Hardy Heinlin]

Is it really this easy??!!!

Sure :-)


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[Mariano]

Charles,

Also, in case the solenoid fails, there is a spring-loaded mechanism that still allows the pilot to go past the inflight position albeit with noticeable resistance as a last-resort tactile warning.

Regards,

Mariano

[Hardy Heinlin]

Charles, it's even easier. I was forgetting that fact that I've added another Q variable some years ago: Qi167 "SpdBrkAuto". This way there is no mix of input and output on the common Qh388 "SpdBrkLever" variable. Qi167 is servo action. Qh388 is manual action.

For further network discussions please use this thread:

http://aerowinx.com/forum/topic.php?id=2560


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[SwissCharles]

@ Hardy: Sorry, I somehow missed the thread over in Networking completely. Will go over there if there is more need for info.

Thank you for this further clarification - it's really easy! The more I delve into the sim, the more I am amazed at the level of thought that went into this software!

@ Mariano: Thanks you very much for this info - I wan't aware about this. So I will have to construct a kind of mechanical hindrance into the lever mechanism.

Thank you all - the wealth of knowledge on this forum is priceless!

Charles