About Auto Throttle (Discussion)

[fjacobsen]

I guess ATC is used on longer legs to relieve the pilot and definitly not when attacking targets.

[Ahmed]

If you operate an aircraft with autothrottle you will see how the throttle movement would not disturb you at all when operating other controls on the throttles. I think the OP did a lot of overthinking here ;)

[Deano87]

Thanks for your direct answer, really appreciate.

 

Like I described above in one of my reply, it is like you are trying to draw a perfect circle using mouse, while someone constantly pulling your mouse pad back and forth in small but constant motion. Although it might not be completely impossible, more than likely it will be much harder to accomplish than it otherwise would be. Now the mouse is the TDC mini stick, the mouse pad is the throttle.

 

When I look at the DCS Hornet throttle, its movement is small though fairly often when ATC is engaged. Of course your hand will be moving with the throttle, but can't be perfectly in sync with it (simple physics as they are not in a "Rigid Connection"), which means the entire mini stick is constantly moving, in tiny scale, relative to your hand/finger. Although this movement could be tiny, say 1mm, the travel distance of the mini stick is also quite small, maybe also 1mm, so it might still significant enough to somehow impact the fine movement of the mini stick, and therefore disturb its operation to some extent. Again, I'm not saying the pilot would therefore not able to get his job done, but such impact seems hard to be entirely ignored...

 

The real TDC is not a “mini stick” like the Warthog TDC, it’s a “force stick” so it’s not based on movement, it’s based on force input into the TDC finger pad, similar to how a real F-16 stick works. With maximum slew command requiring much much more force than what is required to move the TDC on the Warthog. This gives the pilot significantly more fine control over the inputs going into the TDC compared to your average DCS user with an unmodded Warthog TDC. Even if the throttles were moving by themselves (ATC) it wouldn’t be an issue to use the TDC because it requires much more force than what you’re thinking of, so a slight alteration in finger position or force input because of the throttle moving would be insignificant.

 

But

 

As mentioned above ATC isn’t used for tactical situations. It’s used to reduce pilot workload during boring parts of the flight.

 

Every single HOTAS control in a real aircraft requires much more force to activate then what you experience with simulation peripherals.

[SUBS17]

When ATC (Auto Throttle Control) is enabled, we can see the throttle lever is moving back and forth indicating ATC function is now controlling the throttle.

However, I keep on wondering, is it really the behavior IRL? If you would design a system with this ATC function, will you rather keep the throttle lever steady for the pilot to operate all the button and slew controls on it?

 

If the current behavior is exactly what happens on RL Hornet, can someone enlighten me:

1. How can pilot control things like TDC in a smooth way when throttle is constantly moving as a result of ATC?

2. How can pilot prevent breaking ATC when he/she is operating those controls on the throttle resulting in somehow blocking the movement of it?

 

 

Edit:

to add a little more sense to the two points above:

1. Pilot doing the fine slew adjustment by using finger to move the tiny TDC stick on the throttle lever, maybe just one last move, when the throttle suddenly moves a bit backward, and forward, and backward again, and forward again...

2. "Damn you, throttle lever, don't move!" so pilot make a dead grip on the throttle lever, so that it doesn't move, so the pilot can perform precise control on the TDC mini stick. Due to large force applied on the throttle lever to keep it steady, ATC might likely to disengage...

 

One more note to make here: when in game, the throttle does move relatively often even in level flight when ATC is engaged.

 

ATC is for approach only and makes approaches much easier. It should always maintain AoA throughout approach and never drop thrust to an unsafe airspeed like what the DCS Hornet does when engaged. ATC is not for anything else other than Approach.:book:

[=Panther=]

ATC is for approach only and makes approaches much easier. It should always maintain AoA throughout approach and never drop thrust to an unsafe airspeed like what the DCS Hornet does when engaged. ATC is not for anything else other than Approach.:book:

 

There are two modes: ATC Cruise and ATC Approach

[victorlima01]

ATC is for approach only and makes approaches much easier. It should always maintain AoA throughout approach and never drop thrust to an unsafe airspeed like what the DCS Hornet does when engaged. ATC is not for anything else other than Approach.:book:

 

That's simply untrue. Most pilots really don't use ATC that much. But it is not uncommon for a flight lead on admin part of a flight or during cross-country to engage ATC during cruise. Also, ATC for approach is only ever used by the more experienced pilots. In fact I believe most hornet/rhino squadrons prohibit their junior officers from using atc for approach in normal ops.

[ravenzino]

The only time this would or could be a problem is when lasing a target and you needed to move the tgp very rare im guessing. ......

 

Yea, that could be intense. As you said, and I agree, that such situation could be very rare if not non-existence at all...

 

I get your point.

Without input from an actual pilot with experience on this matter, the logical answer is that if they find it difficult to make fine adjustments, they would disengage ATC.

Or maybe it's standard procedure not to use it in that situation anyway.

 

Thanks for understanding. Base on most feedback here, I guess it might be very much so.

 

 

... I found the TDC sluggish and very imprecise. Since this pilot had a warthog hotas for DCS he commented that the real TDC is much more precise, and a bit faster to slew around too.

 

So it's not having these little tidbits of information from everyday operations that makes us sometimes assume wrongly.

 

Anyway, you can ask this sort of question straight to the same guys that have been helping me out. Just join Lex's discord. There's a handful of military operators there who're very helpful and patient.

 

Thanks for that direct feedback from RW pilot. Much better controls plus the minimal possibility of its occurrence makes it unlikely to be an actual issue, which is understandable.

Lex's videos are great. Didn't know he got a discord channel... Will check that out.

Thanks mate.

 

If you operate an aircraft with autothrottle you will see how the throttle movement would not disturb you at all when operating other controls on the throttles. I think the OP did a lot of overthinking here ;)

 

Haha, very likely so:) Now I think I start to getting it why people with pilot experience wouldn't see this as an issue.

 

The real TDC is not a “mini stick” like the Warthog TDC, it’s a “force stick” so it’s not based on movement, it’s based on force input into the TDC finger pad, similar to how a real F-16 stick works. With maximum slew command requiring much much more force than what is required to move the TDC on the Warthog. This gives the pilot significantly more fine control over the inputs going into the TDC compared to your average DCS user with an unmodded Warthog TDC. Even if the throttles were moving by themselves (ATC) it wouldn’t be an issue to use the TDC because it requires much more force than what you’re thinking of, so a slight alteration in finger position or force input because of the throttle moving would be insignificant.

 

But

 

As mentioned above ATC isn’t used for tactical situations. It’s used to reduce pilot workload during boring parts of the flight.

 

Every single HOTAS control in a real aircraft requires much more force to activate then what you experience with simulation peripherals.

 

That explains a lot. Thanks.

Btw, I tried to follow the link in your signature for the "Force Sensor WH Slew Upgrade", but quite pity it seems no longer available...

[Deano87]

That explains a lot. Thanks.

Btw, I tried to follow the link in your signature for the "Force Sensor WH Slew Upgrade", but quite pity it seems no longer available...

 

Yes that is a shame, I managed to grab one while they were still available. Apparently the force sensor itself was around $450 new but DeltaAlpha managed to buy a bunch of them as "new old stock" for $100 a piece. His X-box Stick upgrade is significantly better than the stock TDC though, and is a great upgrade. I've done it to my second Warthog. Highly Recommended!

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=200198&page=88

https://deltasimelectronics.com/products/thumbstick-slew-sensor-adapter

Edited August 12, 2019 by Deano87

[SUBS17]

That's simply untrue. Most pilots really don't use ATC that much. But it is not uncommon for a flight lead on admin part of a flight or during cross-country to engage ATC during cruise. Also, ATC for approach is only ever used by the more experienced pilots. In fact I believe most hornet/rhino squadrons prohibit their junior officers from using atc for approach in normal ops.

 

ATC actually makes approaches much easier but it should be more like the DCS F-14's ATC in how it operates. ATC for cruise, I see that people use it for that but primarily it is for approach.

[bbrz]

ATC actually makes approaches much easier..

You can't simply generalize that. I find it easier (and I prefer) to fly approaches without auto throttle IRL and in a sim.