Dr. Abner Mallity continues to need your help.  He wants your help in designing a proportional control system for Helicopter 1.  (Click here for the original problem.)  Two of his graduate students - Willy Nilly and Millie Farad - have written a simulator for him, but they are now off together for a little hiatus on the island of Langerhans - at least that is what their ticket says.  By clicking here, you can get their simulator and you can put in the values for the transfer function that you found - then run the simulation.  You need to evaluate how proportional control works, including the items below.

        The way the system is supposed to work is that the pilot can input an altitude, and then the plane measures the altitude with the altimeter and uses that information to move the control surfaces so that the plane settles out at the desired altitude.  The simulator has a block diagram that shows how the signals are manipulated in the system in an attempt to produce that effect.

• Is the steady state error predictable?
• SSE is a function of gain.  Does the SSE behave the way you expect?  You will need to check at least 3 (preferably more) values of gain, compute SSE and compare results with predictions.
• Does the system behave as you expect?  Evaluate the following.
• Response in general.
• Rise time.
• Percent Overshoot.
• Relate performance to pole location.  In turn, pole location is a function of the proportional gain that you use.  As you begin to study about the root locus you will find that pole location is a function of the loop gain, and that understanding how pole location affects performance, and how pole location changes as you change the gain are both important things for you to learn.