Question HAC MFD

[nygiantsrob]

Are there any MFD's available to aid with HAC...I'm having a real problem lining up with the runway even using the HSI MFD...Am I doing something wrong ?...I usually end up over KSC at about 40 KM altitude after re-entry but never seem to be able to line up properly on the runway...Help would be appreciated...

 

[Tommy]

None that I know of. I don't really use HSI, myself - by the time you are close enough you had better be fairly well lined up!

If you are coming in fairly straight, say coming into Canaveral from the northwest, it's enough to know the runway heading, 150 degrees in this case. I'll keep my course a bit northeast of Canaveral during re-entry, and try to be ready to transition to normal flight and under 1km/s just before Canaveral is at the 150 heading, then turn in toward Canaveral so that the hud marker is just a sliver to the right of 150. This puts me into pretty good alignment, I can touch up when I get a visual.

Coming in crosswise to the runway is trickier. I try to be in normal flight (not high AoA braking flight) and cross the runway line about 25 km from it's end, at around 20k alt, and around 800 m/s velocity. Then I turn away from the runway and maintain a steady G-force (using the XR-2's G indicators, or the Wing Load guage on the DG, etc) of between 2 and 3 G. As you decellerate, the turn tightens, and you end up fairly in line. It helps to widen the FOV during the turn so the runway comes into sight earlier, then narrow it back down as I get lined up.

Check out the IMFD Full Manual at OH, and you'll see that HAC used in the Moon - Earth Direct re-entry flight.

 

[garyw]

I used the [nomedia="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4126"]Orbiter Racing League (offline v1.1)[/nomedia] to generate a series of waypoints and so allow me to fly a fairly precise HAC.

 

[kwan3217]

There's the glideslope MFD that I put together some time ago which has a HAC mode. You probably want to do things like customize the size and displacement, which it can't do yet, but the code for it is there also, if you want to take a hac at it.

Look for it on orbithangar.

 

[SiameseCat]

There's also GPC MFD, which was created by David413 for the shuttle fleet.

 

[garyw]

There's the glideslope MFD that I put together some time ago which has a HAC mode. You probably want to do things like customize the size and displacement, which it can't do yet, but the code for it is there also, if you want to take a hac at it.

Look for it on orbithangar.

Does the mfd allow for other runways to be added, e.g. the ones at Ascension island?

 

[kwan3217]

The last version I worked on (I think) detected every runway in the world. It reads the Earth.cfg file to find all the runways. I know I did that, I'm just not sure if the Orbithangar version has that.

By the way, the primary purpose of glideslope is to do reentry corridor management for a Space Shuttle. The HAC is just a bonus, but if you only want to use the HAC and ignore the reentry corridor, you can.

An ambitious soul could take my code, add some switches to customize the HAC for different aircraft, and make the reentry corridor customizable for different vehicles.

Upon checking orbithangar: The module there does look for all runways, but the documentation and source code do not mention this. I'll post an update sometime for this.

 

[garyw]

Thanks for that. I did recall you posting about that but thought I might have been dreaming. I'll give this a go!