HANDLING QUALITIES TESTING USING THE MISSION ORIENTED REQUIREMENTS OF ADS-33C

The U.S. Army Aviation Technical Test Center (ATTC) has been conducting numerous flight and simulator evaluations of rotorcraft handling qualities using the requirements contained in ADS-33C, Handling Qualities Requirements for Military Rotorcraft, a proposed updated MIL-H-8501. This design standard has been adopted as the primary handling qualities specification for the RAH-66 Comanche program. Tests have been conducted on a variety of aircraft aimed at developing, validating, and refining the flight test techniques to be used in future ADS-33C evaluations. Research on the handling qualities requirements of the ADS-33C has been conducted to further develop the mission oriented maneuvers contained in Section 4. These stylized maneuvers were designed to evaluate aircraft response characteristics and pilot workload to both single and multi-axis inputs at three levels of aggressiveness. Some of the problems associated with these maneuvers include the lack of "adequate" performance criteria and the importance of obtaining performance criteria feedback in the maneuvers. The latter directly affects pilot gain and has a major impact on the handling qualities rating assigned the task. Several of the maneuvers were redefined to more easily determine performance compliance using low cost instrumentation. Though no substitute for a complete evaluation, the maneuvers as modified, provide an excellent quick look at a mature aircraft's overall handling qualities, and can serve as a map to further testing to define which of the engineering requirements of the specification need to be revisited and tested in detail.