Yeah...but Clint Eastwood did it dead stick...so it can't be that tough.
My understanding, and it is only from some stuff I scanned, is that to fit the new engines, they had to mess with the front to back balance, necessitating a system that would help the pilot prevent stalls.
Which suggests they made it unstable.
Reminds me of the space shuttle. It is flown by computer. If they actually tried to “stick and rudder” it, it would be impossible for a human being to keep it from crashing.
Would Obama do that? Huh?
Yeah...but Clint Eastwood did it dead stick...so it can't be that tough.
The new engines have a higher bypass ratio and thus much larger diameter cowlings. The new nacelle (cowling) would not fit under the wing (as the old engines would), so they moved the engines farther forward and increased the height of the landing gear. It's claimed that Boeing eked another 14% improvement in fuel consumption out of the airliner.
But that change changed how the jet handled in certain situations. The relocated engines and their refined nacelle shape have added lift forward of the center of gravity particularly during high angle of attack (AOA) flight which causes an upward pitching moment. Boeing added the new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) “to compensate for some unique aircraft handling characteristics during it’s (sic) Part 25 certification” and help pilots bring the nose down in the event the jet’s angle of attack drifted too high when flying manually, putting the aircraft at risk of stalling.
MCAS activates when the sensed AOA “exceeds a threshold based on airspeed and altitude.” That tilts the 737 Max’s horizontal stabilizer upward at a rate of .27 degrees per second for a total travel of 2.5 degrees in just under 10 seconds. How much the stabilizer moves depends on Mach number. At higher Mach the stabilizer moves less, at slower speeds it moves more.
If the plane is at a high AOA — or its sensors erroneously believe that it is — “the MCAS function commands another incremental stabilizer nose down command.” The system can be deactivated if pilots trim the aircraft manually to override the MCAS’s attempt to automatically pitch the jet’s nose down. The system is not active when flaps are down.
In the Lion Air crash, it seems that a malfunction in the aircraft’s angle of attack sensor mistook the normal takeoff climb as dangerous and forced the plane to pitch downward 26 different times.
Joe Engle, a former X-15 pilot, claimed to have landed the shuttle manually, although the computer may also have been involved some.
“If they actually tried to “stick and rudder” it, it would be impossible for a human being to keep it from crashing.”
They landed the first couple flights manually.
It's the same plane but different name and software..........