A Wisdom Archive on Autopilot

Linear controls use negative feedback to keep some desired process within an acceptable hour. For example, a thermostat is a simple negative feedback control- when the temperature goes below a threshold, control starts. In household thermostats, a simple switch turns the furnace on. However, a simple logic control like a home thermostat doesn't respond smoothly. In industrial furnaces, it's often better to turn the fuel valve open proportionally to the coldness of the furnace. This avoids sudden shocks to the furnace that can shatter brickwork or s ...

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Wiley Post - With Harold Gatty. Like many pilots at the time, Post disliked the fact that the speed record for flying around the world was not held by an airplane, but by the Graf Zeppelin, piloted by Hugo Eckener in 1929 with a time of 21 days. On June 23, 1931, Post and his navigator, Harold Gatty left Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York in the Winnie Mae with a flight plan that would take them around the world, making fourteen stops along the way in Newfoundland, England, Germany, the Soviet Union, ...

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Eastern Air Lines began life on April 19, 1926 as Pitcairn Aviation. Pitcairn won a government contract to fly the US Mail between New York City and Atlanta, Georgia, operating Mailwing single-engine aircraft. In 1929 Clement Keys, the owner of North American Aviation, purchased Pitcairn. In 1930 he changed the name to Eastern Air Transport, and it would soon be known as Eastern Airlines. In 1938, the airline was purchased by World War I flying ace, Eddie Rickenbacker. Rickenbacker pushed Eastern into a period of prodigious growth. Th ...

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A-10 Thunderbolt II - Features. The A-10/OA-10 has excellent maneuverability at low speeds and altitude, thanks to wide, straight wings. These also allow short takeoffs and landings, permitting operations from airfields near front lines. The plane can loiter for extended periods of time and operate under 1,000 foot (300 m) ceilings with 1.5-mile (2.4 km) visibility. It can fly at a relatively slow speed of 200 mph (320 km/h), which makes it better at ground-attack than fast fighter-bombers, which often have ...

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Pure logic controls were historically implemented by electricians with networks of relays, and designed with a notation called ladder logic. Nowadays, most such systems are constructed with programmable logic controllers. Logic controllers usually respond to switches or photoelectric cells, and cause the machinery to perform some operation. Logic systems are great for sequencing mechanical operations in places like elevators and factories, but notably poor at managing continuous process controls ...

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Fuzzy logic is an attempt to get the easy design of logic controllers, and yet control continuously-varying systems. Basically, a measurement in a fuzzy logic system can be partly true, that is, if yes is 1, and no is 0, a fuzzy measurement can be between 0 and 1. The rules of the system are written in natural language, and translated into fuzzy logic. For example, the design for a furnace would start with: "If the temperature is too high, reduce the fuel to the furnace. If the temperature ...

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Since modern small computers are so cheap (often less than $1 US), it's very common to implement control systems, including feedback loops, with computers, often in an embedded system. The feedback controls are simulated by having the computer make periodic measurements, and then calculating from this stream of measurements (See digital signal processing). Computers emulate logic devices by making measurements of switch inputs, then calculating a logic function, then s ...

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In diagrams that depict information flow in a system, arrowed lines are usually drawn, directed from input through the system and to output. The feedback is shown by another arrowed line, directed from output outside the system to an input, resulting in a loop on the diagram, called feedback loop. This notion is important; for example, the feedback loop is a convenient place for a control device. The following is an example of a feedback loop used in web-based workflows. Feedback Loops are established by ISPs for permission e-m ...

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The A-10 was developed in response to events in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, a large number of ground-attack planes were being lost to small arms fire, surface-to-air missiles, and low level anti-aircraft gunfire. This led to a need for a specialized, heavily armed, heavily armored aircraft that could not only survive hostile airspace, but was more capable than its predecessors. On 6 March 1967 the US Air Force released a request for information to 21 companies. Their objective was to create a design study for a low cost attack ai ...

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The first unit to receive the A-10 Thunderbolt II was the 355th Tactical Training Wing, based at Davis-Monathan Air Force Base, Arizona in March 1976. A-10s were initially an unwelcome addition to the arsenal in the eyes of Air Force brass. The Air Force prized the high-flying, high-performance F-15 and F-16 jets, and were determined to leave the dirty work of close air support to Army helicopters. The planes proved their mettle in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, destroying more than 1,000 tanks, 2,000 military vehicles and 1,200 ...

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Date deployed: March 1976 Unit cost: US$9.8 million Inventory: active force, A-10, 143 and OA-10, 70; reserve, A-10, 46 and OA-10, 6; ANG, A-10, 84 and OA-10, 18 A-10 Thunderbolt II - Dimensions. Wingspan: 57 ft 6 in (17.53 m) Length overall: 53 ft 4 in (16.26 m) Height overall: 14 ft 8 in (4.47 m) Wing area: 506 ft² (47.0 m²) A-10 Thunderbolt II - Powerplant. Two GE TF34-GE-100 ...

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The flight, which left Larnaca, Cyprus at 09:07 local time, was en route to Athens, and was scheduled to continue to Prague. After the flight failed to contact air traffic control upon entering Greek air space, two F-16 fighter aircraft from the Hellenic Air Force 111th Combat Wing were scrambled from Nea Anchialos Air Base to establish visual contact. They noted that the aircraft appeared to be on autopilot. In accord with the rules for handling "renegade" aircraft incidents (where the aircraft is not under the pilots' control), one fighter ...

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In 1961 Eastern inaugurated the Eastern Air Shuttle, featuring hourly flights of Lockheed Constellations and Electras between New York-LaGuardia, Washington, DC-National, and Boston-Logan Airports. The service emphasized convenience and simplicity—revolutionary in an era when air travel was both considered and expected to be a luxury. Not only were seat reservations not required, seat assignments were not given, and initially no check-in was required and no boarding passes were issued. Eastern guaranteed availability, however, and p ...

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