Interestingly enough I am looking to buy a glass panel (shock, horror) Mooney from an ex astronaut and STS mission commander.
So general assertions about pockets and snakes might or might not hold true. Just like Ferrari vs Lexus comparisons :’-)
Tell him to say hello to Bill Shepherd from me, first Space Station commander and Great Lakes biplane nut 
Link. I had fun trying his plane, while he wasn’t getting sunburn flying the thing thousands of miles around the country (USA) open cockpit. Sunburn was apparently his big problem after he learned to do good fiberglass and paint work in his hangar and had finished with his cowling.
That didn’t prevent him from describing my initial problem with the blind Great Lakes biplane flare to landing as being “an issue of understanding the pitch control gain”. I did make acceptable landings eventually but was mainly just enjoying the free flight…
I’m sure all those guys know each other 
Quotep.s. is it possible that the higher adaption rate of digital displays and so forth is among IT professionals as they have a greater understanding of how they work? I know my father would prefer steam, he’d freak out if he was dependent operating a computer to keep him alive!
Glass worries me, not because I’m uncomfortable with technology but because I don’t fly often enough to learn to operate or stay current using complex systems. As a hobby programmer, my feeling is that computers have a tendency to fail more weirdly than hardware (see the recent thread about AIs failing when they lose the static/pitot supply). Outside of IMC flying I don’t really see any advantage of all-singing all-dancing tools. I like GPS, but as a standalone system.
Personally I see the difference in emphasis more as a result of how people think of flying and what they see an aircraft as being for. In my experience, hang-gliding is the ‘flyingest’ sort of flying. You don’t need any instruments except sometimes an altimeter/variometer. Ending up 50 miles from where you started is an achievement for most people, and it’s almost an inverse means of transport as you are not only unlikely to end up where you want to, but getting back again afterwards can be an ordeal and you will probably need to depend on a 3rd party. But a whole flight consists of making important decisions in a timely manner. Piloting.
In my hang-gliding club, we had an airbus captain and (mostly before my time) an RAF Tornado pilot. People who were hardly going to be intimidated by a glass cockpit, but found that there was something lacking from their experience of flying/piloting that could be remedied in simple (not primitive) aircraft with very little recourse to avionics or safety systems where it was very much possible (but mercifully rare) to kill yourself.
There’s a big difference between wanting to pay the death penalty for any minor oversight and wanting to retain control over your aircraft and flight. Ultimately you can’t prevent a person killing themselves without taking all control away from them. And if you take all the control away, then they might as well buy a flight on Easyjet. The question is where the balance lies.
I won’t mind a gentle nudge from an invisible one so I don’t visit a $100 funeral…
why should a glass sixpack be any safer than a steam gauge sixpack? Given that the former is designed to work exactly like the latter, I couldn’t care less.
What annoys me though is if a one pixel difference on a digital AI causes 20fpm climb vs. 50fpm descent like on the FNPT II simulator I’ve used – this makes hand flying harder than it needs to be.
is it possible that the higher adaption rate of digital displays and so forth is among IT professionals as they have a greater understanding of how they work? I know my father would prefer steam, he’d freak out if he was dependent operating a computer to keep him alive!
Yes – very true. It is a controversial thing to say but while “almost anybody” can get a PPL, a much smaller % of people can understand the user interface of say a G1000. And a much smaller % of that group will understand the integration of it to the rest of the aircraft systems. The extent to which that matters is another debate – if you are renting out an SR22 like the “147” groups here in the UK, for about 300 quid an hour, and you merely require a PPL plus a brief bit of type training, then you obviously don’t care about that very much so long as the customer gets to Le Touquet and back (with his new [hoped for] girlfriend) in one piece and preferably not having pulled the chute
What annoys me though is if a one pixel difference on a digital AI causes 20fpm climb vs. 50fpm descent like on the FNPT II simulator I’ve used – this makes hand flying harder than it needs to be.
I have played with sims fairly extensively in the past, and on the FTO sims here and there, and have never seen one which behaves in pitch like any real plane.
The stuff about sky gods etc rarely comes up here on EuroGA, thankfully. One gets a lot of that unpleasant stuff on other forums where some twat beats people around the head with his claimed huge experience (usually the words “at work” are very casually dropped in, with absolutely minimal supporting info ) and does no favour to both himself and more importantly to any GA representative bodies on which he is well known to be “serving”…
You’re right Peter – but that’s not the fault of “glass” per se but rather the interface design.
If Apple can design an interface that a four-year old (who couldn’t use say a typing machine) can grasp, clearly “glass” per se is not the problem.
Fact is glass allows (or would if the regulators would allow it) you to show and customise a lot more information on a lot less real estate, once the “legacy sixpack” mindset is left to a side.
I can get most car running parameters displayed on an android smartphone app (USD 5) via a Bluetooth canbus adapter (USD 30)… rocket science it ain’t.
You’re right Peter – but that’s not the fault of “glass” per se but rather the interface design.
Well, yes, you could program a G1000 sized unit to display the old instruments
But nobody would buy it.
It’s funny to notice how professional stuff like the Proline differs from the GA stuff like the G1000. The latter is designed for the “Ipad generation” and is pretty suboptimal for what is actually needed for high performance IFR operation. Garmin must make that decision consciously, for marketing reasons. The Proline is far less obvious, but I can tell you which of the two systems I would rather have.
If Apple can design an interface that a four-year old (who couldn’t use say a typing machine) can grasp, clearly “glass” per se is not the problem.
This could start a religious debate (we never have those here, hey ) but I would suggest that IOS was designed to do that, at the expense of a massive loss of functionality, not to mention the owner’s hair loss as soon as he (women normally have more hair to start with) tries to do something not completely totally trivial with it… like… trying to print to a PDF and then move that PDF to his PC.
Dumbing down is good for selling retail stuff, and is good for penetrating the “zero attention span – I want it NOW” markets (which nowadays are dominant in retail IT) but it is usually a poor solution for users who need more functionality, because while the functionality could be crammed in there (by putting in yet more layers of menus) it would be painful to use it. I have an Ipad2 and have more or less given up trying to do anything long term useful with it.
Fact is glass allows (or would if the regulators would allow it) you to show and customise a lot more information on a lot less real estate
What there isn’t much information on is what the actual regulatory issues are. For example, Avidyne seem to be for ever struggling to finally certify their IFD440/540 boxes, to the point where the whole thing is IMHO a complete farce. They fly in Exp Cat aircraft and they obviously do work very well but the FAA is alleged to be picking tiny holes in the user interface and just keeps finding new ones.
As a general rule, airline pilots seem to fly Piper Cubs on the weekend and computer programmers seem to like glass cockpit IMC tourers. I’d like one of each.
I violate that rule! I work all day with computers, mostly software side, and then I have hobbies which include writing code in assembly language, designing and building various electronic devices (and currently rolling my own SoC on an FPGA, based on the altor32 cpu, a minimalist version of the OpenRISC 1K architecture).
But when I fly, I fly an antique with absolutely no electronic systems. Part of it is because I can’t afford an SR-22 or DA-40 but a lot of it is that sometimes I just need to do something that’s not to do with electronics or software (although I’ll make an exception for Skydemon when travelling rather than just out for a bimble).
It’s funny to notice how professional stuff like the Proline differs from the GA stuff like the G1000. The latter is designed for the “Ipad generation” and is pretty suboptimal for what is actually needed for high performance IFR operation. Garmin must make that decision consciously, for marketing reasons. The Proline is far less obvious, but I can tell you which of the two systems I would rather have.
I love the functionality of the G1000 but I hate the user interface…
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_M.1
I have not found the quote but the Air Ministry based on a report from the RAeFarnborough declared around 1915 that monoplanes were inherently unsafe and there was no future for them…
…hence the very capable Bristol M.1 never served n the Western Front!
