Arwing Flight Instruments

[DZComposer]

Out of boredom, I have decided to design some flight instruments for the Arwing.

The games have hinted that both the Arwing and the Wolfen have "glass cockpits," meaning most of the instruments are displayed on Multifunction Displays (MFDs) rather than on mechanical or electronic dedicated instrument displays.

This first instrument I have designed is the Arwing's Attitude Director Indicator (ADI).

Basically, an ADI tells the pilot where the aircraft is pointing. It also contains other information to consolidate the basic flight instruments into one area to ease pilot workload when scanning the instruments.

This first view is in atmospheric mode. In Atmospheric mode, it functions much like the ADI you would find in the cockpit of any plane here on Earth.

click to enlarge

Orange represents the ground, Blue represents the sky. The intersection is the horizon. This part of the instrument is the Artificial Horizon. It allows the pilot to know the orientation of the plane even in he can't see out the windows.

The numbers around the circle are the bank angles. The whole thing rotates as the plane rolls.

The white tick marks, some labeled, indicate the angle above or below the horizon the nose is pointing.

The green cross-hair represents the plane. It stays put and the whole thing rotates under it.

The yellow bars are indicators of where to point the plane to stay on course. It is in landing mode, so there are two. The verical one is the Localizer. When it lines up with the center, you are heading towards it. The horizontal one is the glide slope, which helps guide the pilot into a smooth landing.

IAS - Indicated Air Speed. This is the speed measured by the air flowing into the Arwing's Pitot Tubes. IAS becomes inaccurate at higher altitudes.

BANK - Bank Angle. Wanna watch this go crazy? Do a barrel roll!

ALT - Altitude, how high the Arwing is from sea level.

HDG - Compass Heading

TAS - True Airspeed. This is the flight computer's calculation of the Arwing's true airspeed based on IAS and Altitude.

Mach - TAS divided by the Speed of Sound

Baro - Barometer. This is entered by the pilot to current weather conditions to ensure accurate altitude information.

RA - RADAR Altimeter. This uses RADAR to measure the distance between the Arwing and the Ground. Unlike Earth planes, the Arwing's RA can measure altitude from the edge of space, but due to the fluctuations of terrain it is not a suitable number for navigation and is mainly used during landing or as a backup to the altimeter.

The next one is in Space Mode. In Space, things are a bit different.

click to enlarge

You'll notice immediately that there are a lot more tick marks and numbers on the artificial horizon. Also, all the labels have changed.

This is because in space, you need to track your heading on three parameters! Pitch, Yaw, and Roll!

The tick-marks around the circle measure roll angle.

The white tick marks measure pitch angle.

The gray tick marks measure yaw angle.

The cross-hair has the same meaning and characteristic except that it now has four bars to measure Yaw.

The yellow lines and yellow triangle represent the headings programmed into the flight director.

Pilots are given space headings in coordinate triads: (pitch, yaw, roll).

FWD VEL - Forward Velocity in m/s. Values can be negative if the Arwing is using it's reverse thrust from a stop.

ROLL - Roll angle. The third of the coordinate triad.

PITCH HDG - Pitch Heading. The first of the coordinate triad.

YAW HDG - Yaw Heading. The second of the coordinate triad.

Everything is labeled noticeably for safety. It makes it obvious what flight mode the ship is in. Being in the wrong mode can cause serious problems, particularly if you are in space mode in-atmosphere.

Annunciator Panel:

Click to Enlarge

This panel shows important statuses. Each word lights up as needed. The master buttons on the right also trigger alarms when lit. Green are general status. Orange are cautions. Red are warnings.

Cautions are conditions that could lead to serious danger if the pilot doesn't act soon.

Warnings are conditions in which the aircraft is in immediate danger and require immediate pilot action.

I have more instruments designed. I will add to the thread as I complete mockups.

[Sapphire]

Wow, these look awesome, DZ! Nice job.

 

Did you have any ideas for a team communication screen? Or something along those lines?

[DZComposer]

I do have an idea for a comm screen. I guess I could do that one next.

I figure I should define some of the things on the annunciator panel.

APU - Auxiliary Power Unit - A generator that provides electrical power when the engine is off.

GI Coils - Gravity Induction Coils. From what I gather form the Itoh comic, these coils are the main components of the G-Diffuser. There is one over each wing. If the coil output drops, it could effect the controlability of the aircraft. I would imagine they would generate a lot of heat, so I also added fire warnings.

STANS - Star Tracking Attitude and Navigation System. This system takes images of the stars and uses those images to set the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) zero-points for pitch, roll, and yaw. This provides a standard attitude calibration that is necessary for Space Traffic Control to give useful instructions to space pilots (Everyone's (0,0,0) needs to be the same). It can also do non-precision star-based navigation.

[conaly]

Hi,

APU - Auxiliary Power Unit - A generator that provides electrical power when the engine is off. Usually left on during flight as a backup power source.

You would never leave the APU running after engine start on a real airplane, neither commercial airliner, nor fighter (if is has one), if there are no abnormalities. It consumes fuel and is completely unnecessary. In case of an complete engine failure most airplanes have RAM-fans, which provide energy. Just for information

Still looks interesting so far. What do you have else in planning? I'd like to see a good HUD :-)

[DZComposer]

Hmm, I thought I had read otherwise somewhere. Oh well.

[conaly]

Hi,

you need the mainly APU for a two things:

 

1st - providing electrical power for all aircraft systems while the engine generators are offline.

2nd - providing bleed air for engine startup and for the air conditioning system while all engines are off.

 

After engine start you switch off the APU, as the electiracal power and the bleed air comes directly from the engines. Of course it depends on the airplane. The Boeing 747 for example did not have an APU in the its first versions. On the 747-400 you can't startup the APU inflight (not sure if this applies to the new 747-8 though). But as it has four engines, you don't need backup power from the APU, as the chances of a quad-engine failure is near to zero (still it happened a few times).

 

One different thing are ETOPS flights. These means flights over large areas with no airports (like deserts or oceans) within a certain reachable time limit (depends on plane from 60 minutes tu 330 minutes). As ETOPS rules apply mainly to airplanes with two engines, you sometimes need a backup, so that you may be forced to startup the APU inflight for the ETOPS area. This for example is necessary for the Boeing 737, which has no ram air turbine ("RAT"). On other airplanes like Boeing 757 or 767 you just have to make sure the APU is ready for operation in case of an engine or generator failure.

 

Ok, I wrote too much, sorry for going off topic^^