Peter wrote:
The problem (for me at least) is not reading the current bank angle, which is obviously easy. It is interpreting the dynamic situation. To control the plane in roll you need to react instantly to the dynamic situation, and the above video shows that the two are the opposite of each other
But to me they look the same, because I don’t look at the pointer, just the picture of blue and brown!
Yes; what I was getting at is that ex KI256 users will perhaps not be looking at the blue and brown instinctively – because the KI256 shows very little blue and brown.
Also looking at the triangles is more precise.
I can see that “glass” pilots (G500 and bigger) will just look at the blue and brown (the “overwhelmingly obvious horizon”) and someone further back did say that he was not even aware of the triangles 
Maybe this issue surfaces only with electronic AI presentations which are small, like the SN3500 EHSI. These small instruments are common in TBMs, bizjets and such (the EFIS-40 etc) but are not common in piston GA. The Sandel SN3500 is a really classy product but at $10k plus installation and VAT was never very popular in piston GA, and then the very much cheaper Aspen EFD1000 ate its lunch.
Actually I wonder what the EFIS-40 looks like? I found this which suggests it looks like the KI256
From the above link:
Here is a Chinese/Russian AI in a bank (Nan Chang)
Does anyone know why the Russians/Chinese chose blue for ground…?
I suspect the Russian ones are upside down is because it makes it easier to make an “aerobatic” attitude indicator, since you don’t have to reverse the movement of the gyro to present it on the face of the instrument (so you need fewer parts to make an attitude indicator that can go all the way over during a loop).
I suspect the Russian ones are upside down is because
Eh? Surely they just needed to paint the face the other way around?
Archie wrote:
Does anyone know why the Russians/Chinese chose blue for ground…?
Water is blue, sky is black/dark ? You have the same situation in the winter with snow. Intuitively the Russian way looks just as right (or wrong) as the western way. It’s the interface between the two colors that matters, and any two different colors will do. It is really more like white letters on black background or black letters in white. Just because black in white simulates the page in a paper book, doesn’t make it “right”.
(on “upside down” Russian attitude indicators)
ortac wrote:
Eh? Surely they just needed to paint the face the other way around?
No, that wouldn’t work. You have to reverse the motion of the gyro, which means some mechanical components.
If you just took a Russian one from a Yak-52 and repainted it so that brown was on the bottom and blue was on the top, when you pitched up the AI would display a dive and when you pitched down the AI would show a climb. The horizon on these gyros moves in pitch in the opposite direction to on Western instruments (which have mechanical components to reverse the motion of the physical gyro inside the instrument). Think how the actual gyro inside the instrument moves. Imagine the wheel of the gyro spinning in perfect alignment with the actual horizon outside the window. When you pitch the nose up, the gyro remains aligned with the horizon, and so the part of the gyro wheel nearest to the instrument face is moving upwards relative to the instrument face – but on Western instruments, the horizon line has to move down the face of the instrument – so the motion of the gyro has to be physically reversed to show this presentation. This makes it more complex to make a gyro that will not hit a gimbal limit during aerobatics. The Russians simply never reversed the movement of the gyro so had to put the sky on the bottom and earth on the top. This makes for a mechanically much more simple instrument at the cost of possible pilot confusion.
How do you fight against being confused when switching between different AI types?
Type 1:
Type 2:
Both showing right bank side by side:
Type 1 is a sky pointer and type 2 a ground or roll pointer type.
Apparently sky pointers are more common on commercial aircraft displays while ground pointers are more common on GA displays.
There is a study showing that the ground (roll) pointer type is markedly superior to the sky pointer type in recovering from unusual attitudes – which is a bit ironic considering the prevalence of the sky pointer type display in CAT. This is suspected to have been a contributing cause to at least one fatal accident.
