Foil: 7 Panel: 1 Column: 4 Line: 109

Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Manager Engineering, The Boeing Company, St. Louis, Missouri.

Directed Development and flight test of the Intelligent Flight Control System on a NASA Test F-15 Aircraft. This system detects changes in aircraft stability due to damage or failure to the aircrafts control system and then applies changes to the control system software to restore stability to the damaged aircraft, thus to permit a safe landing.

Working with the Navy, James M. Urnes Sr developed an improved Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS) for Navy Carrier based fighter aircraft. These aircraft must operate in all weather conditions, including very low visibility. Complicating performance is the air disturbance found in the landing zone immediately behind the carrier fantail. This is usually a strong down-draft that can cause the approaching aircraft to sink dangerously below the commanded flight path. To counter this problem, the commanded fight path was elevated five feet to allow for this sinking action. However, if this down-draft (termed the burble), was lessened or different, the aircraft would touchdown too far down the deck and thus miss the arrestment cables and bolter. Mr. Urnes developed a much better ACLS by re-designing the aircraft ACLS flight control system to use a vertical rate signal. This design, termed the H-Dot ACLS, was developed and flight tested on a Navy Test Center F-4S flight test aircraft, and evaluated during actual carrier landings. The five foot elevation was removed. Results were excellent. This H-Dot ACLS is installed on all F/A-18 fleet aircraft and is now part of the Navy ACLS specifications.