[Hood]

Originally Posted by raaaid

yeas but for heavens sake how gullible you have to be to believe than an f16 stick has a six mm dead zone and havent you fly sims and know pretty well the dead zone issue, its ridicuolus

I'll try one last time.

The movement of the stick does not affect the control surfaces. The pressure on the stick causes the computer to determine the input to the control surfaces.

Now, you may say that to move the stick requires pressure so in fact the stick has no dead zone because any pressure that moves the stick also causes a control surface input. True it does, but the movement is based on the pressure and not the movement of the stick.


SIDE STICK VERSUS CONVENTIONAL CENTER STICK
Both the Hornet and Viper use fly-by-wire flight-control systems, which means aircraft response is governed by a set of programmed flight-control laws that "live" in the flight-control computers, which I affectionately refer to as "George." In other words, the pilot isn't flying the airplane, George is. The pilot tells George he wants the airplane to do something, and George then zips through the math to figure out which flight-control surfaces should be moved to fulfill the pilot's request. The big difference (and it is a big one) is that the Hornet uses a conventional center stick, and the computer senses stick position to interpret what the pilot wants. The Viper uses a side stick, and the computer senses stick force from pilot input.
Flying a side-stick control takes a while to get used to, but once you do, it's a joy. The conformal stick's shape feels very natural (it fits in the hand like a melted candy bar), and it allows easy access to nine of the 16 HOTAS controls. Two fully adjustable forearm rests on the right cockpit bulkhead stabilize and isolate the pilot's arm and wrist, so when rattling around the cockpit during turbulence or going after the bad guy, the pilot's arm won't accidentally move and initiate unwanted control inputs. In its original design, the Viper's control stick didn't move at all; it just measured pressure from the pilot's hand. However, after initial F-16 flight tests, a ¼ inch of stick movement was incorporated to give a small dead band and a nominal breakout force to give better "feel" of a neutral stick because otherwise it was entirely too sensitive. The control harmony is quite good (the pressures required for pitch and roll mix well), but without the capability to physically position the stick, it's easy to contaminate roll inputs with unwanted pitch inputs, and vice versa.

My first Viper instructor predicted that I would over-rotate on takeoff and drop the right wing; he was right. The over-rotation occurs because a pilot is used to "moving the stick and then something happens" at rotation speed. When I reached 145 knots and pulled back, of course the stick didn't move but a scant ¼ inch, so I pulled more. The inexperienced have no way of knowing how hard to pull, so I pulled probably twice as hard as was necessary.

"A Navy Test Pilot's Perspective" by Tougas, John Toonces "Flight Journal" Jun 03 Issue