ABSTRACT
Important to pilot acceptance of an airplane's flying qualities are the displays and control manipulators provided for the task to be performed. The C-17 is a long-range, air-refuelable, turbo-fan-powered, high-wing, heavy military cargo aircraft built around a large, unobstructed cargo compartment. The C-17 uses a quad-redundant flight control system employing digital electronic fly-by-wire technology. With flaps retracted the C-17 exhibits conventional swept-wing handling qualities. C-17 characteristics were rated similar to those for a C-141 which was flown in identical HQDT tests by the same pilots. The design and development of flying qualities on the C-17A military transport airplane has been described with some examples of work performed in the analysis of issues found during piloted simulation and flight test. The specification criteria supplemented with the time delay research for transport-sized aircraft guided the formulation of the stability and control augmentation system control laws to be further developed by piloted simulation.
