The method of aircraft control system evaluation

The dynamical development of general aviation brings necessity of creation an aircraft control system enabling safely fly the plane to people having no extraordinary qualifications. Main goals of such control system are to reduce pilot's load, to improve the control precision, to prevent an aircraft against dangerous situations. There are lots of criterions applied to grade and to describe both aircraft's flying characteristics and handling qualities of general aviation airplanes equipped with a classical mechanical control systems. But modern small transportation aircraft are going to be equipped with fly-by-wire control systems and there are no clear, straight, rules defining the process of rating and describe handling qualities of small airplanes with fly-by-wire control system. The paper presents the methodology created by authors allowing classifying and comparing handling qualities of general aviation aircraft equipped with fly-by-wire control systems. It takes into consideration two parameters: pilot's effort during realization of ordered tasks and precision of his control. The presented methodology was tested during real operational conditions on a small four-sited airplane PZL-110. Sample results reached during flight tests are included.