I've never had the opportunity to fly an airplane with
cruise control, but with other autopilot systems (heading
and altitude being most popular in my experiences).  There's
not a really big push to maintain a specific airspeed, except
for maybe when in a speed-restricted zone and you have an
airplane that will exceed that.  Usually most pilots will
set a specific manifold pressure/throttle setting and let
the airplane do what it can speed-wise.

My guess is that you will run into significant red-tape with
regulations/certification.  Pick up an airplane magazine and
look thru the ads for the brands of these systems, then
contact the manufacturers for their distrubutors, and hence
pricing.  Names like Bendix/King, Narco, UPS (yes the same
shipping company), JP instruments, and PS Engineering come
to mind.  Contact the FAA in the US or other group in other
parts of the world and get the equipment standards &
certification docs.  In the US, the AOPA is also helpful
with stuff like this, but there may be another similar org
in your neck of the woods.

BTW, pilots may not be as helpful as aircraft owners, or
ideally: A&P mechanics.

Hope it helps,
-Neil.



-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Jinx
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 7:48 PM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: [EE]: Airplane cruise control


I've been asked to look at a cruise control for a single-
engined light plane. I got the request via an intermediary,
who doesn't know a lot of details except that

(1) the micro should maintain the sensor input at 200Hz by

(2) sending a DC pulse to a pitch-control servo on the propellor

It seems "simple" enough, under ideal conditons anyway, but
if any of the licenced pilots on the list have any comments I'd
be glad to hear them. There will be real life factors to take
into consideration, eg buffeting, plane loading, time needed to
change pitch etc

Also, I have my hourly rate of course, and have a rough idea
what time is involved in the initial stages at least, but have
no idea what a commercially available unit costs. Possibly
the enquirer can't afford a unit off the shelf, I don't know. Any
ideas ? I'd just like to know whether I'm hundreds or thousands
of dollars off-beam. As there could be a small run follow up,
it would be nice to know I could actually get a reasonable return

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