FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1955
1955 - 0008.PDF
8 FLIGHT SWISS GUIDED MISSILE... VF-400m/» On the right are trajectories of pursuit for missiles fired in succession from the same launcher at the same target. The large diagram below gives an outline of the actual control system employed by the Oerlikon Type 54 guided missile. H km OF TARGET IE OF FLIGHT *"ID OF MISSILE 5- ATION OP TUDE-ANO IENCY - JITION TRANSFORMATION OF CONICAL-INTO CYLINDRICAL COORDINATES WING-DISPLACEMENT SERVO-SYSTEM COMPUTING AMPLIFIER ROLL-POSITION CONTROL BY FREE GYRO PITCH AND YAW CONTROL BY FIXED GYRO riONOF -AND EAM HCIES AMPLIFIER GAIN CONTROL COARSE-FINE SWITCH TRANSFORMATION OF POLAR - INTO CARTESIAN COORDINATES TRANSFORMATION INTO MISSILE - FIXED COORDIN- ATES ELECTRO - HYDRAULIC SERVO-SYSTEM For the movement of the two beams, the /?-£ co-ordinatesystem has been chosen in order to avoid a singularity in the zenith. The beam transmitter is also movable about (a), pro-vided this is done before the missile is launched. The control system of the missile, hereafter described, canprovide for continuous accelerations very much greater than those possible with manned aircraft. Nevertheless, were appropriateprovision not made, it would be quite possible to lose control The Type 54 missile is here shown about to be winched up along a ramp which places it in the right position for the catches to be engaged when the launcher is elevated. of a beam-riding missile simply bymoving the beam too quickly for the missile to follow it. (The beam can bethought of as being very similar to the light from a searchlight.) The Oerlikonbeam transmitter is fitted with a special computing circuit which limits themaximum angular velocity and accelera- tion which can be applied to the trans-mitting aerials. Two illustrations show the twinlaunching unit which serves to hold the missile in the required position for take-off. As can be seen from the specifica- tion, the launching acceleration is almost3g, and this is apparently sufficient to enable the weapon to be fired into theguiding beam without the need for a lengthy ramp and (more surprisingly)without any jettisonable booster section. The missile is positioned in the launch-ing cradle by hydraulic and pneumatic circuits, the operation of which is largely POSITION- automatic. The loaded launcher is thenINDICATOR e'evated to the required firing angle by electrically controlled servo mechanisms.The missile control system, already briefly described, requires a consider-able array of airborne components housed within the missile itself. These are best tabulated as follows: — (a) Aerials (either suppressed or flush with the missile skin) to pickup the microwave signals from the beam transmitter. (b) A frequency separator to distinguish between the signals from thecoarse and fine beams. (c) Receivers for filtering and de-modulating the guidance signals.(d) A coarse- and fine-beam receiver for amplification, regulation and de-modulation of the sub-carrier. _^ This photograph shows the "business end" of the computor vehicle. The various items of equipment contained by this unit are described in the text. I
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
