Solar Impulse - Flight Envelope Test

"The pilots will need brawny arms and muscles of steel" - Flight Envelope Tests
"The pilots will need brawny arms and muscles of steel to work the controls" jokes Bertrand Piccard when referring to the pilotability of the Solar Impulse prototype: in order to avoid any superfluous power requirement of the limited solar energy, the prototype's controls have been re-sized and will now be direct and unassisted. This means that the pilots will need a lot of strength to move them. "We already know that the aircraft will be difficult to pilot", André Borschberg underlines, explaining furthermore the additional challenges the pilots are going to face: "It will need a great amount of attention to get it to fly, taking care to avoid any departure from the neutral horizontal position." Two special devices will be assisting the pilot in this task: a flight control instrument will give a more precise indication of the aircraft's bank angle and flight vector supplementing the artificial horizon; and the man-machine interface will warn the pilot of potentially dangerous situations by means of transmitting vibrations.

Experience with the Solar Impulse Insights video clip "Flight Envelope Tests" the Solar Impulse team's evaluations and tests on the controls.

Category:

Science & Technology

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• solarimpulse
• hbsia
• hbsib
• symbol
• airplane
• solar
• energy
• world
• zero
• emission
• piccard
• betrand
• Flight
• Envelope
• Test