US 2019/0161203 A1Published application

System and Method for Flight Mode Annunciation

AssigneeBell Helicopter Textron Inc.

InventorsRobert Earl Worsham, II, Morganne Cody Klein, Christopher M. Bothwell, Luke Dafydd Gillett, Jillian Samantha Alfred, Sung Kyun Kim, Stephanie Baynham, Troy Caudill

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Abstract

In an embodiment, a method of indicating flight modes of a rotorcraft includes: detecting a change in flight mode of the rotorcraft from a previous flight mode to an active flight mode, the active flight mode and the previous flight mode each being from one of a first subset or a second subset of a plurality of flight modes; determining whether the active flight mode and the previous flight mode are from different subsets of the plurality of flight modes; and updating one or more flight mode indicators on an instrument panel of the rotorcraft in response to the active flight mode and the previous flight mode being from different subsets of the plurality of flight modes.

Claims24

Dependent claims

A rotorcraft comprising:

a rotor system producing thrust along an axis of the rotorcraft;
a flight control computer operable to control flight of the rotorcraft along the axis according to an active flight mode of a plurality of flight modes;
pilot flight controls electrically coupled to the flight control computer, the flight control computer operable to select a first selected flight mode from a first subset of the plurality of flight modes according to input from the pilot flight controls;
and
an instrument panel electrically coupled to the flight control computer, the flight control computer operable to receive a flight mode selection signal from a flight director of the instrument panel in response to the flight director selecting a second selected flight mode from a second subset of the plurality of flight modes, the second subset different from the first subset;
wherein the flight control computer is configured to:
set the active flight mode to one of the first selected flight mode or the second selected flight mode in response to the flight director being coupled to the flight control computer;
display a first indicator on the instrument panel in response to the active flight mode being set to the first selected flight mode from the first subset of the plurality of flight modes;
display a second indicator on the instrument panel in response to the active flight mode being set to the second selected flight mode from the second subset of the plurality of flight modes, the second indicator different from the first indicator;
and
control flight of the rotorcraft along the axis according to the active flight mode.

8 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.