Sperry Rand Corporation

Kenzel P Manning

Abraham Lempel

Martin Cohn

William C Post

Larry J Bowe, Jr

Donald H Baker

In the vertical path control of an area navigation system when the aircraft ascends or descends to a waypoint with an 'at-or-above' or 'at-or-below' altitude requirement, vertical steering is effected at a constant airspeed with regard to a reference airspeed. An alert device is included to provide a warning to the pilot when the aircraft flight path angle is less than the straight line flight path angle to the waypoint for 'at-or-above' waypoints or when the flight path angle of the aircraft is greater than the straight line flight path angle to the waypoint for waypoints with an 'at-or-below' altitude requirement. Altitude error is displayed on a vertical deviation indicator of an aircraft flight instrument in accordance with the difference between the actual aircraft altitude and the altitude of the next waypoint having a firm altitude requirement. When the aircraft ascends or descends to a waypoint through the pressure-barometric altitude transition, flight path angles are computed and utilized as the vertical steering reference to avoid a steering discontinuity at the transition altitude. When the aircraft is on a descent path to a waypoint and an airspeed reduction is required, vertical angles are computed and utilized for generating the vertical steering signal whereby a speed reduction transition zone is included in the flight path to effect the speed reduction and make good the desired waypoint altitude.

Vertical path control for aircraft area navigation system

The invention is described in the environment of a binary data magnetic recording and reproducing system and comprises a binary to non-consecutive zero code converter for encoding the input binary data into a non-consecutive zero code which, in turn, is recorded on the magnetic medium. In recording, a flux transition occurs for each ONE of the non-consecutive zero code. A bipolar peak detector detects the flux transitions and thus detects the presence of the recorded ONEs. The peak detected signals are utilized to continuously trigger a mono-stable multivibrator having a period whereby the multivibrator relaxes to its stable state in the absence of a ONE which denotes the presence of a ZERO. The peak detected signal and the output of the mono-stable multivibrator are utilized to synthesize a clock signal from the recorded non-consecutive zero data. The recorded data is applied to a non-consecutive zero code to binary converter which is synchronized by the data derived clock to recover the originally recorded binary information.

Growing community of inventors

Phoenix, AZ, United States of America

Kenzel P Manning