EVALUATION OF THE BLEU AUTOMATIC LANDING SYSTEM

The report contains: a description of the operational procedures used with the DC-7 during approaches for automatic landings; a general description of the additional airborne electronic equipment required for automatic landings; histograms, graphs, and statistical comparisons that describe the performance of the system at touchdown and over the final portion of the approach and landing path; data obtained from pilots and other observers during automatic landings made on instrument landing system installation presenting various types of approach terrain. Based on the results obtained during the evaluation, it was concluded that: the single channel automatic landing system allowed the DC-7 to make consistent automatic landings of good quality; the results obtained using a directional localizer were comparable to those obtained using magnetic leader cables (indicating no need to introduce magnetic leader cables for lateral control); and, the present DC-7 flight instruments were not adequate for monitoring of automatic landings during extremely poor visibility conditions. (Author)