* Melchior FRANZ -- Tuesday 18 March 2003 10:52: > * David Megginson -- Tuesday 18 March 2003 00:52: > > http://www.me.psu.edu/me415/fall01/boeing2/ [...] > Who's going to ask for it? :-)
I did, and here is the answer. In short, Dr. Horn planned to contribute the helicopter code (if there are no export restrictions imposed on the Sikorsky/NASA model) as soon as it is mature enough. This will hardly be before this summer. m. :-) * Joe Horn <joehorn(at)psu.edu> -- Tuesday 18 March 2003 22:06: | The flight model we use is based on GENHEL. It is a flight model of a | UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter (as used by the US Army). It is a real | engineering simulation model, originally developed by Sikorsky Aircraft, | but this version was later published through NASA Ames Research Center. | Boeing helicopters sponsors the project though a gift to the | university, but they have no ownership of anything developed in the | project (since it is a gift not a research contract). Although the | model is public domain, since it was published by NASA, I might have to | check if we can publish our version through GNU, becuase the model might | have export restrictions since it is a military helicopter simulation | (in other words, anyone in US can use it, but it is not supposed to go | to other countries). But I am not sure if this is the case. | | Anyway, the model is still a little rough right now. The code was | originally in Fortran, and we had to manually translate it to C, and the | code has not been fully validated. The code is pretty complex, roughly | 7000 lines, and this is slightly watered down from the original model. | The integration with FlightGear is a little "ad hoc", we have | expertise in flight dynamics but we are not C++ programmers here. But | we are continuing to develop it and the helicopter does seem to fly in | a reasonable manner. The helicopter is pretty difficult to fly, which is | expected to some degree, since helicopters are pretty unstable and | require constant adjustments in all four control axes. I have improved | the handling somewhat through modifications to the stability | augmentation system (the electronic flight controls). One problem is | that you really need a control stick with a "Force Trim Release", that | is a button that resets the detent or center point of the stick. We use | helicopter controls from www.flightlink.com, but it doesnt have this | capability. I have some mechanical engineers currently developing such a | system. There are also some other limitations in the flight model. For | example we dont currently have a ground contact model, so you can't land | the helicopter! | | Anyway, If we can release the model, I dont think it would be ready for | release until this Summer. I would like to contribute to the FlightGear | project, so I will pursue this but I cant guarantee anything right now. _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
