Communications: electrical – Aircraft alarm or indicating systems
Reexamination Certificate
1999-10-28
2001-07-03
Wu, Daniel J. (Department: 2632)
Communications: electrical
Aircraft alarm or indicating systems
C340S971000, C340S975000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06255964
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Throughout the long evolution of aircraft, both light single and twin engine as well as larger commercial and corporate aircraft, there has been no standardization of the multiple flight instrument gauge and indicator display on the aircraft instrument panel. Rather, the placement and arrangement of instruments thereon has always been a matter of available space, convenience, or the aircraft designer's particular preference.
As an elemental matter of continuous experience to every beginning and skilled pilot, transition from one aircraft to another invariably requires restudy and relearning of the location on the panel of the primary and necessary flight instruments before undertaking flight. The position of the instruments has varied from manufacturer to manufacturer as well as in model to model from the same manufacturer over the years.
All panel-mounted indicators and devices are intended to be placed to be viewable by and accessible to the pilot or pilots in handling and utilizing the aircraft. These include fuel gauges, fuel pumps, tachometer, clock, diverse switches for numerous functions as lights, flaps, etc., as well as communication equipment, and vary in location as deemed advisable in arranging the panel area at initial factory assembly or later rework or modification.
There are, however, of the many instruments available, six which are critical to safe handling of the aircraft in flight, especially under weather conditions inimical to visual flight (VFR) as the dark of night, haze, mist, scattered clouds, or undercast, or in any instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) requiring flight by instrument flight rules (IFR) solely by reference to panel instruments without visual assistance from outside the cockpit.
These six instruments comprise the:
(1) Altimeter
(2) Artificial Horizon
(3) Compass
(4) Vertical Speed Indicator
(5) Airspeed Indicator
(6) Turn and Bank Indicator
Ever since the development by Sperry of the gyroscopic artificial horizon more than sixty years ago, substantial development and training effort has been applied to teaching and learning to safely control an aircraft and its flight by reference to these instruments, either as a sole source of flight information, or as an adjunct to limited visual flight ability. Such training has made possible safe takeoffs, flights, and landings for pilots and passengers in less than desirable weather conditions, even in the absence of radio communications.
Even so, as above indicated, the irregular, and non-standardized placement of necessary flight instruments on the panel in any aircraft and between one aircraft and another has handicapped training and learning of the techniques of flying by sole reference to instruments. Instrument flying is demanding, and the random disposition of instruments on the panels of differing aircraft has led to countless recorded instances of loss of control of aircraft under difficult flying conditions by the inability of the pilot to quickly observe, assimilate, and use indicated and accurate information from related but irregularly spaced and positioned directional and rate instruments, frequently resulting in injury and death.
Notwithstanding modern and superb navigational instruments, including radar, global positioning systems, as well as omnirange navigation, ILS and other preplanned terminal area approaches and navigation aids, etc., failure of the pilot to keep the aircraft upright or in a controlled bank, or at a proper altitude, and with an airspeed maintained above stall, by insufficiently rapid scan and perception of instrument panel information available remains a primary cause of accidents.
Efforts have been made in the past to improve the panel format of flight instruments in an attempt to improve the ability of pilots to scan and use the information provided by diverse flight instruments. See, for example, the U.S. Pat. No. 1,836,881, Henderson U.S. Pat. No. 1,924,037, Schulz U.S. Pat. No. 2,398,724, and Gordon U.S. Pat. No. 2,660,977. These patents teach varying grouped arrangements of instruments in a manner seeking to improve the scan of the pilot for quick grasping of the conveyed instrument information, thereby to enhance aircraft control and safety. These prior patents contemplate circular or cruciform arrangements of selected instruments generally representing the vertical and horizontal axes of the aircraft, for example, but do not cooperatively and symmetrically relate the functions and panel positions of each instrument to each other during cross-checking of the same by the pilot.
None of these patents, any more than the present instrument panels extant in aircraft in use today, disclose or suggest the concept of a specifically integrated and symmetrical array of known flight instruments providing unique respective and related aircraft directional and rate information before the pilot's eyes in a proximate, adjacent and symmetrical grouping for reliable and quick assimilation of the related flight indications.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF TEE INVENTION
The unique concept and practice of this invention derives from my extensive observation and instrument flying experience wherein I have determined that a novel proximate, and especially, symmetrical array of the six earlier noted key flight instruments affords ready and rapid visual determination of flight parameters from the instruments, whereby the pilot may be and remain in control and command of the aircraft notwithstanding adverse flying situations, as IFR conditions, storms, or turbulence, as well as communication demands, for example.
Specifically, it is critical to observe that three of these principal instruments provide aircraft directional information to the pilot, while the remaining three provide aircraft rate information. By appropriate symmetrical grouping or clustering of the same, the pilot is enabled to quickly grasp and relate flight data therefrom, without searching a randomly arranged instrument panel in an uncoordinated and asymmetric visual scan for the indicators providing the needed information. To this end, the invention herein embraces the concept of providing the principal flight instruments in two grouped, proximate, and specific arrays on the panel. There is, accordingly, a first array of three instruments in generally adjacent relation providing primary aircraft directional information to the pilot, and a second array of three instruments also in generally adjacent relation providing rate (or motion) information to the pilot. Further, the two instrument cluster groups are proximate each other, whereby the pilot can quickly perceive and react to related control information from adjacent instruments of each group.
By thereby providing a pair of symmetric clusters, whether circular, rectilinear, or in other geometric pattern, comprising one cluster of instruments specifically chosen and grouped to provide directional information, and a second cluster of different instruments providing rate information, a unique and hitherto unrealized cooperative relationship is provided to the pilot for ease of interpretation and use. Thus, irrespective of the non-standard placement on or around the instrument panel of other useful and necessary devices, as numerous switches, clock, carburetor heat control, etc., the unique system of the invention, when so similarly arranged in many different aircraft, permits pilots in piloting such differing aircraft to be at ease and comfortable in controlling the aircraft by reference to principal blind and visual flight instruments, without the need to mentally study and try to readjust one's instrument scan for the diverse locations of necessary indicators in each different aircraft flown.
Such arrangement of these conventional flight instruments has been hitherto unrecognized in the art or in actual aircraft available on the market.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4673356 (1987-06-01), Schmidt
patent: 5134394 (1992-07-01), Beadle
patent: 5668542 (1997-09-01), Wright
patent: 5808563 (1998-09-01), Ching et al.
Low and Low
Tweel , Jr. John
Wu Daniel J.
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