A wacky idea

"Ramapriya" wrote in message
om...
Is it not possible to have buttons inside the cockpit that perform a
set of checklist actions that pilots normally do at various phases of
flight and save pilots that bother? I'd have thought it nice for a
button to activate an electronic pre-flight check and report an AOK

Well, you're still going to need a checklist to check that one button.

Now, let's look seriously at this and see why it's a false idol. One generic
pre-landing checklist is called GUMPS (it's an acronym- pilots love acronyms
for checklists). It can be used on almost every propeller plane from a
little 2-seat trainer to a multi-engine turboprop with small modifications.
It stands for the following items:

Gas- set throttle for landing
Undercarriage- lower landing gear
Mixture- set fuel mixture to full rich
Prop- set landing RPM
Switches- radios on proper frequency

Now, to have a "magic switch" that performs all of these tasks would
actually be quite complicated. The landing gear is just an on-off electrical
switch so that's pretty simple. But the throttle, mixture, and prop are all
mechanical controls, and would require some kind of servomotor to drive
them, just like an autopilot. Now guess what? You're going to need a
checklist to make sure all of those systems work before you depend on them.
So you've made the plane heavier and more complicated but not really saved
the pilot any trouble.

One thing you need to understand is that while the aviation business and
pilots in general love to talk about new technology, we are in fact often
quite conservative about using it. The reason is that new technology is by
definition unproven technology, and the consequences of failure in flight
are often fatal. Compare this to, say, boating. If the engine in your boat
fails, you wait there, drink some beer, and wait for the towboat to show up.
If all your electronics die and you're in terrible fog, you motor along very
slowly back to port so if you hit something, you probably don't sink. And
even if you sink, you probably don't die right away, and many people are
pulled out of the water after all kinds of awful things happened to their
boats. Suffice it to say that the tolerance for errors in airplanes is quite
a bit lower.

-cwk.

PS- May I offer a gentle suggestion that the forum "rec.aviation.student"
would be the best place for many of your questions?

"C Kingsbury" wrote in message
nk.net...

"Ramapriya" wrote in message
om...
Is it not possible to have buttons inside the cockpit that perform a
set of checklist actions that pilots normally do at various phases of
flight and save pilots that bother? I'd have thought it nice for a
button to activate an electronic pre-flight check and report an AOK

Well, you're still going to need a checklist to check that one button.

Now, let's look seriously at this and see why it's a false idol. One
generic
pre-landing checklist is called GUMPS (it's an acronym- pilots love
acronyms
for checklists). It can be used on almost every propeller plane from a
little 2-seat trainer to a multi-engine turboprop with small
modifications.
It stands for the following items:

Gas- set throttle for landing
Undercarriage- lower landing gear
Mixture- set fuel mixture to full rich
Prop- set landing RPM
Switches- radios on proper frequency


Mine are a little different -

Gas - fuel selector on the proper tank
Undercarriage - down and locked
Mixture - set fuel mixture to desired position
Prop - set for desired RPM
Seatbelts - confirm everyone has their seatbelt fastened

Allen

Allen ) wrote:

Mine are a little different -

Gas - fuel selector on the proper tank
Undercarriage - down and locked
Mixture - set fuel mixture to desired position
Prop - set for desired RPM
Seatbelts - confirm everyone has their seatbelt fastened

Does anyone ever take their seatbelt off in a small aircraft? My
preflight brief instructs the passengers to always leave their belt on.

--
Peter

Seatbelts - confirm everyone has their seatbelt fastened

Does anyone ever take their seatbelt off in a small aircraft? My
preflight brief instructs the passengers to always leave their belt on.

Sometimes people do, for reasons that don't really matter. The time to find out is before the crash, not afterwards.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose ) wrote:

Seatbelts - confirm everyone has their seatbelt fastened

Does anyone ever take their seatbelt off in a small aircraft? My
preflight brief instructs the passengers to always leave their belt on.

Sometimes people do, for reasons that don't really matter.

Really, even after you've briefed them about not doing so?

--
Peter

Sometimes people do [remove their seatbelts], for reasons that don't really matter.

Really, even after you've briefed them about not doing so?

Really. It hasn't happened to me, so I'm actually speculating, but based on human nature I would not skip the "do you have your seatbelt fastened" check as a simple article of faith. Also things can get caught and the belt can unbuckle by itself.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Peter R." wrote:

Does anyone ever take their seatbelt off in a small aircraft? My
preflight brief instructs the passengers to always leave their belt on.

I don't usually take mine off. Some of my back seat passengers have done so in
flight. It allows them to change sides if the better view is on the other side of the
plane. I occasionally have done so if I were alone and needed to reach something in
the back seat. When Elisabeth is with me, she may do so for the same reason. I just
make sure everyone has them fastened before we land.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message ...

I don't usually take mine off. Some of my back seat passengers have done so in
flight. It allows them to change sides if the better view is on the other side of the
plane. I occasionally have done so if I were alone and needed to reach something in
the back seat. When Elisabeth is with me, she may do so for the same reason. I just
make sure everyone has them fastened before we land.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.

Hi George!

I read somewhere, maybe Flight Training Mag., about a guy flying a
Pantheon and his seat belt had some slack. He was knocked out cold
when his head hit the ceiling, the plain hit turbulence. He woke up
close to terrain after over an hour of unconciousness. It was one of
those I learned from it articles.

I have been in some bad turbulence. I always keep my belt tight. But
then again, I only can afford to rent for two to three hours at the
most. I don't have my own plane. Two to three hours of tight seat
belt is tolerable. For those that are lucky enough to have their own
planes, I guess you fly so much that the seat belt would become a
bother.

Bryan

G.R. Patterson III ) wrote:

I don't usually take mine off. Some of my back seat passengers have done so in
flight. It allows them to change sides if the better view is on the other side of the
plane. I occasionally have done so if I were alone and needed to reach something in
the back seat. When Elisabeth is with me, she may do so for the same reason. I just
make sure everyone has them fastened before we land.

Right or wrong, years of driving in a state that was one of the first to
impose a seatbelt law have made me look to seatbelt use as second
nature, and the lack of their use as completely unnatural.

When I first started flying in a C172, I dumped the GUMPs check since
three (or even four, counting the seatbelt check) of the checks were not
applicable to that aircraft. Since flying a retractable-gear Bonanza,
though, I have reincorporated its use several times when in range.

As a two-year instrument rated pilot who strives to minimize the work
load on approach, I think of the seat-belt check as something belonging
in the in-range check, normally done well before the GUMPS check.

Furthermore, the chances of encountering head-bumping turbulence are
higher from the moment the descent out of the cruise altitude begins, at
least in a small aircraft, so a seatbelt check with the instruction to
leave them on seems more practical at that point, rather than in the
pattern during the GUMPS check.

But, I am just commenting on this check, not trying to change the world.

--
Peter