I am wary of more automated systems in GA airplanes. As often as I have found some small benefit or convenience, I have also found latent failures or the opportunity to mis understand information (complete, otherwise). This past spring I was testing flying a Cessna 185 amphibian with a (new to me) Lidar system for telling the pilot the gear position relative to the landing surface. Though the annunciations and self checks made it sound like it was working – it was not. But the only way to confirm it was not working, was to actually fly the plane at 75 KIAS within 100 feet of the water – which would be catastrophic in the case of an engine failure then! It’s failure mode would have let me land with the wrong gear position, with no warning. And, were I to fly an approach off shore onto a water landing, I would not get a warning until I crossed to flying over water – probably too late to go around if the gear were down. The system had so many logic gaps, I thought it was more likely to introduce a pilot error, than prevent one. Way better just to use the pre landing checklist, and visually check the gear position using the physical indicators!
Data is good, excessive systems and annunciations, not so much. If you need to be told you altitude while very low in a GA plane, you’re doing something less than adequately well.
I wouldn’t risk becoming dependent on such a system. My concern is, if I rely too much on it, I might (will?) forget how to land my airplane without it. This is calling for trouble the day the system is inoperative.
Besides, I don’t think I need this to “grease it” – not that I grease all my landings, far from it :D
Those annunciations are all well below normal GA minima so it might be handy for a total-emergency zero-zero landing where there is no ILS or LPV option available.
But then you will almost certainly crash due to lack of L/V guidance – unless you are doing it over some vast salt lake 
For any zero-zero situation I would head for an ILS and autopilot-coupled; no question.
For a gear reminder, the “five hundred” you get from the various “aviation consumer” GPS boxes is fine. It would be nice to have a specific gear warning which you can do with a radar altimeter on which you can do it at 200ft.
How does this Mooney thing work? IR laser?
Peter wrote:
How does this Mooney thing work? IR laser?
GPS > 200 and IR sensors lower
This past spring I was testing flying a Cessna 185 amphibian with a (new to me) Lidar system for telling the pilot the gear position relative to the landing surface.
I don’t think the LHS sensor here is designed to work on seaplanes? the question of operation over water probably is very moot
I think this would helpful picking up wrong QNH at 1000, 500, 200 call-outs under IFR (of course one can land without QNH, I don’t even know why Tower ATC give us this QNH/QFE altimetery c***p for landing under VFR? it just distract the pilots from looking outside while turning the knobs)
I would love to try it in dark night or low visibility (where one rely mostly on peripherical vision while keeping some power)
Ibra wrote:
the question of operation over water probably is very moot
Unless your landplane landing is being flown over water, onto shore, to a runway threshold at the water.
In any case, for my experience (some of which is in planes with no electrical system) there are some pilot tasks which are simply “do it right, or a bad thing will happen”. I have found it better to just learn to do these things on the basis of checklist use, and having enough situational awareness to know when they must be done. Layering more gizmos onto very simple and vital tasks diminishes the “sole track” thinking that the pilot should be applying to the basic task. And, when that gizmo system fails to operate properly, then the pilot begins to attend to a failed supplemental system, rather than simply flying the plane basically – as though the non required, supplemental gizmo system is vital to the success of the flight. Piloting the plane is vital to the success of the flight, the supplemental stuff can be, and should be ignored when it fails – it must be to prevent distraction at vital times!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_401
I have noticed (and occasionally fallen victim to), being lead further into deteriorating conditions where I should not flying that aircraft, because that aircraft was equipped with a gizmo which might enhance the capability of the aircraft. PPL training tells that VFR operations in basic GA aircraft must avoid deteriorating weather conditions – if you encounter, turn around. With hundreds of hours of experience of actual IFR flying in IMC conditions in well equipped twin engine airplanes, I was flying an MD500 helicopter south from Alaska many years ago. I had to remind myself that any poor weather encounter (it was late autumn) required a turn around, as the helicopter was not equipped with an artificial horizon. I have exited poor weather in needle/ball/airspeed, but I’m sure not entering that way!
I vote to be proud to be a good pilot using simple basic skills and disciplines appropriate to the aircraft type, rather than indulging in many gizmos!
I vote to be proud to be a good pilot using simple basic skills and disciplines appropriate to the aircraft type, rather than indulging in many gizmos!
It depends on which scenarios we are looking at? field landing at night, it does not hurt to have Synthetic-Vision and LHS?
When I am bimbling or freestyle flying,
- I can fly and land without in Jodel or Turbulent without electrical systems not even looking at TACH or ASI
- I can hand fly glider in towered cumulus using trim wheel and wet compass while navigating on tablet with frozen ASI and no pitot heat…
So I assume the basic skills you are referring to are there when doing “freestyle flying”
When I am flying weather, day and night, I am inclined to try to use all the tools available: auto-pilots, synthetic-vision, tablet, terrain warning, traffic warnings as there are lot of distractions from controllers, procedures, radios…but again I don’t suffer from information or technology overload, YMMV, I think my day to day work keeps me current: can post on EuroGA while watching 6 screens and working on two keyboards
Same debate as re what use is a RADALT (link posted above) in a fixed wing GA plane. In the end one flies the published procedure and that does not call for a RADALT of any kind.
If you have done a huge screwup and found yourself in OVC000 and too much air in the tanks, that’s a different thing, but the smart thing then is to fly an ILS (or LPV) on autopilot. You have an autopilot which can fly an ILS, haven’t you? 
That’s why Trio/Trutrak are useless.
But, hang on, if this system uses IR it won’t work in IMC, will it???
Indeed autopilot on ILS should square any IMC concern (especially with LPV, you can even keep flying it after threshold and touchdown), you still have the flare to sort out
Yes light sensor need some visibility to detect the ground but you rarely have less than 200ft visibility? even with zero-zero conditions human life continue to exist using their eyes to live outside: walk to terminals, find their aircraft, find doors, drive cars, eat food, recognise faces in the road…
Maybe it’s useful to flare Pitts without sideslip? due to lack of forward & lateral visibility
Not installing one as it’s too expensive
