Abstract: Control apparatus for effecting control of thrust magnitude and thrust vector angle for aircraft of the short take-off and vertical landing type known by the acronym STOVL comprises a fixed housing (10), a manually movable stick member (7) supported with respect to the fixed housing (10) and arranged to provide a throttle input, the stick member (7) including a grip (8) to enable it to be gripped and moved manually relative to the fixed housing (10), and a rotatable collar (9) arranged to provide the thrust vector angle input. Preferably the grip includes an upright hand-datum flange (13) for positively laterally locating a controlling hand and the hand-datum flange (13) is located at one extremity of the grip (8) and the collar (9) is located at the other extremity of the grip (8).

Abstract: A computer control system, especially a flight control computer system, comprises a series of computer modules operating in parallel and asynchronously to carry out respective parts of an overall control algorithm for a series of items to be controlled, each computer module having a data transmission port connected via a broadcast line to a respective input port of each other computer module so that communication between modules is achieved by any of the modules broadcasting asynchronous data messages onto its broadcast line for the messages to be received by any other modules which require them.