Flight Director Information and Pilot Performance in Instrument Approaches

This report documents the results of a research effort conducted to identify problem areas encountered during instrument approaches and landings in an F-16A through adverse meteorological conditions. Phase I consisted of identification and simulation of visual conditions likely to produce the conflictmisorientation experienced under real-world conditions and development of performance measurement standards for F-16A instrument landing system ILS training. During Phase II, an experiment was conducted using the F- 16A flight simulator at the Aircrew Training Research Division of the Armstrong Laboratory ALHRA to evaluate F-16A pilot performance with five different ILS instrument configurations 1 Head-up display HUD with flight director, 2 HUD without flight director, 3 Panel instruments only, 4 Panel Instruments and head-down flight director, 5 HUD with flight director, head-down flight director, and panel instruments. Normal aircraft configuration Includes an ILS HUD display with flight director and cockpit panel instruments with raw ILS information. The head-down display, not found on the F-16A aircraft, was developed solely for the research. The display consisted of a head-down flight director that displayed computed steering commands from the HUD on the radar electro-optical display REO. Twenty F-16A pilots with diverse levels of experience participated in this effort. Each pilot received 5 min of free flight and three practice approaches under benign visual flight rules VFR weather conditions. The pilot then flew 15 approaches three under each condition, counterbalanced under more difficult visual weather conditions which included scattered clouds, 1 12 mile-visibility, a 6,000-ft ceilling, and a 15-knot crosswind.