Technology is Incredible...

Glass cockpit, color radar, gps... lots of stuff.

These aren't things you can do, they are just equipment. What things
can you do with this equipment that you could not do a few decades
ago? Just replacing a real instrument with a picture of an instrument
on a screen doesn't change much of anything, except the potential
failure modes.

True, the physical flying is unchanged.

However, when the pilot is freed from the burdens of navigation, he may
fly more freely. It used to be that I didn't dare wander too far off
my planned flight, cuz that's what I had marked on the charts. In
fact, as a new pilot, if I diverted off my flight path (to look at
something on the ground, for example), I would laboriously fly BACK to
my original flight path, just so I could find all of my landmarks.

Those days are long gone, thanks to moving-map GPS. (Well, and 1500
hours of experience.)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

How does pressing "direct to" replace a detailed flight plan? What do
you do if the GPS fails?

*chuckle*

Then, my boy, we have to NAVIGATE! Every pilot is taught how to do
this, even if we'd rather just push "Direct to" and GO.

GPS has only failed me once, back when I had a Lowrance Airmap 300. I
took off solo from Maquoketa, IA in marginal VFR (after having some
upholstery work done on our old Warrior), and as I climbed to pattern
altitude I noticed that the GPS wasn't updating. It was just staring
at me stupidly, showing me stationary on the ground.

It was/is very unusual for me to fly solo, so I had some "three-handed
flying" to do while I messed around with the stupid thing, trying to
remember how to clear-start it whilst aviating into not the greatest
visibility and ceiling. After a few minutes, I just said "To hell with
it" and took up an approximate heading for home.

Somewhere en route I managed to get the thing to re-boot, and was quite
pleased to discover that I was precisely where I expected to be.
Straight-line navigation isn't all that hard, it's just inconvenient
compared to GPS.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 2006-10-30, Jay Honeck wrote:
Only in the 21st century:

There was an article on the PM programme on Radio 4 last year about one
of the last World War 1 vets dying aged something like 105 or 106 years
old.

When he was a child, there were no airplanes. He probably didn't have
electric lights in his house (although they existed). Between being
middle aged and dying, the entire semiconductor went from not existing
at all to the Pentium 4 processor running at over 3 GHz. Aircraft went
from the Wright Flyer to the Boeing 777, and it reached the 777 when he
still had ten years left to live. Entire types of technology were
invented, reached their peak, and then made totally obsolete while
he was a pensioner.

He saw an entire basis for civilization - the Soviet empire - rise and
fall within his lifetime.

He got to see how future predictions were almost entirely wrong all the
time, and technology improved in some directions out of all recognition
while hardly moving in others. In the 50s and 60s, they were all
predicting flying cars - but a mechanic transplanted from 1935 to today
would be pretty much totally at home with the airframe and power plant
of many of today's light GA aircraft. Yet all the futurologists totally
missed the cell phone - we already have better phones than Star Trek
forecast for their communicators.

--
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On 2006-10-30, Mxsmanic wrote:
Now compare that to the rate of change in aviation. What can you do
today in a cockpit that couldn't be done when you were born?

Well, it'd be a bit cramped, but that made my dirty mind work overtime
:-)

--
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On 2006-10-30, Jay Honeck wrote:
When I first started flying, flight planning was laboriously done with
a sectional chart and a pencil. I would carefully plot my course,
figure out VOR frequencies, plan waypoints where I could triangulate my
position with multiple navaids, and make note of visual checkpoints. It
could take 20 minutes to plan a 1-hour flight. It could take DAYS to
plan a multi-day, truly "cross-country" trip.

Even with manual flight planning, the time spent planning is more a
function of experience. I had about 1000 hours when I flew my Cessna 140
coast to coast in the United States. It was all done by hand, and by
looking out the window - the fun of the trip was partly in the
navigating.

It didn't take days to plan - indeed, planning took about as long as
reviewing the charts and drawing a line (which I like to do when using
GPS anyway, so I'm well aware of special use airspace). Also, with
experience, you can divert off track and not have to go back to where
you diverted - being able to match up ground features and map features
becomes vastly easier with practise, as does estimating intercept
courses and estimating ETE.

--
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On 2006-10-31, Mxsmanic wrote:
How does pressing "direct to" replace a detailed flight plan? What do
you do if the GPS fails?

Turn on the backup handheld unit?

If the GPS fails, you aren't lost - you're on course. Anyone with Jay's
experience should just be able to pick up the chart and eyeball it from
thereon in, and perhaps tune in a couple of VORs.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Jay Honeck wrote:
Only in the 21st century:


I've been involved in the Internet from the dim times. I wrote
one of the early routers in 1983 or so. Still for a while it
was purely an academic/military thing and while we expected
computer networks to progress we really thought we were going to
get plowed under by the ISO (telephone company centric).

I remember two major turning points.

The first is when I was looking for an IRC relay and the closest
one I could find was in Slovakia (if you told me that I'd be using
the outgrowth of a military network to talk to Slovakia back in
'83 I'd have though you were daft).

Second, was not too long after the web started getting some popularity
I was watching the Indy 500 and at the end of the first commercial for
Valvoline, www.valvoline.com appeared on the screen. I figured it had
finally hit the masses if they expect some couch potato sports fan to
know what a URL was.

In article ,
Ron Natalie wrote:

I remember two major turning points.

The first is when I was looking for an IRC relay and the closest
one I could find was in Slovakia (if you told me that I'd be using
the outgrowth of a military network to talk to Slovakia back in
'83 I'd have though you were daft).

I remember in 1992 being on a chatline (non-IRC, but same concept)
and talking to people on all seven continents at the same time.
Yes, there was someone on from Antarctica, at McMurdo Station. Not
surprisingly, his handle was 'Coldman'.

The funny thing was a few semesters later having a CS Professor
talk about how the Internet reached six of the seven continents,
and having to correct him.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/

Happy Dog writes:

Situational awareness, for non-retards, at a glance. Get over the idea that
more dumbed-down data is worse.

It's not necessarily worse, but it does encouraged underqualified
people to attempt things that they aren't really equipped to handle in
terms of experience and skill.

--
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Jay Honeck writes:

However, when the pilot is freed from the burdens of navigation, he may
fly more freely.

But when the pilot who knows nothing of navigation and depends on a
computer to fly loses the computer, he dies more quickly.

It used to be that I didn't dare wander too far off
my planned flight, cuz that's what I had marked on the charts. In
fact, as a new pilot, if I diverted off my flight path (to look at
something on the ground, for example), I would laboriously fly BACK to
my original flight path, just so I could find all of my landmarks.

Those days are long gone, thanks to moving-map GPS. (Well, and 1500
hours of experience.)

Surely you could do much the same in the past, albeit with a bit more
effort.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.