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What are your partial panel skills like?

That’s not my experience at all. I have > 100hrs in PA28s and every one would enter the spiral of death, sooner or later.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

A PA28 is definitely not stable in roll.

Probably all aircraft of relatively modern design, including the PA28, have lateral stability in roll up to around 25 to 30 degrees of bank. ie they want to right themselves due to mainly dihedral and aerodynamic dampening. Around 30 degrees bank they are in a zone of neutral stability and will attempt to stay in that bank until the nose starts to drop and then they exhibit negative spiral instability.

The original bush pilot cloud break technique, so not a get out of inadvertent IMC technique, is to fly on a compass heading of South where the compass is most sensitive, trim nose up and enter a gentle low power descent, keeping the heading on South using rudder pedals only. It is surprisingly effective in aircraft like the fixed gear PA28 with a lot of positive lateral stability.

With modern glass and excellent standby gyros it is surprising that the regulators want us to train for operating a dodgy Navajo in Namibia. Limited panel sign off on the IR is an exercise for flying on the turn coordinator, compass, airspeed and altimeter. With modern standby glass this seems to be rather pointless training, as most glass cockpits have neither a compass or turn coordinator!

The big airline case studies tend to be pitot static related, ie partial panel, and yet there is no formal training requirement for this. In fact Airbus only introduced an IAS mis compare memory item into the QRH AFTER/as a consequence of AF447.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

One should verify what functions and what does not in a glass panel when there are failures. Just because you have a backup device does not mean it will function properly if the primary fails. In VFR conditions, pull the CB on the PFD/MFD and verify what functions you actually will have.

KUZA, United States

A PA28 is definitely not stable in roll. Very few planes are (maybe @pilot_dar knows some, but I don’t).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

UdoR wrote:

I’ve been told that in a PA-28 you could cut off power, trim slowly all the way back, and lower the flaps as soon as speed allows. In this configuration you’d have a high chance of just popping out below the clouds in a stable configuration, where you just add power whenever visual reference is back.

My memory of ab initio training in PA-28-161 is that they fly barely above safe “remove on notch of flaps” retraction speed with full flaps and full power.

ELLX

Peter wrote:

All one can do is a gentle descent, using the compass, and hope that you don’t hit a gust.

I’ve been told that in a PA-28 you could cut off power, trim slowly all the way back, and lower the flaps as soon as speed allows. In this configuration you’d have a high chance of just popping out below the clouds in a stable configuration, where you just add power whenever visual reference is back. I’ve yet to come to test it.

Peter wrote:

I don’t buy the 178 second stories about fresh PPLs

I do.

Germany

My partial panel work has got much better since I have been flying a plane with no AI no turn co-ordinator and no DI plus no VOR, DME, ADF.

If you actually did that in IMC then you would not be posting about it; you would be pushing daisies I don’t buy the 178 second stories about fresh PPLs but one simply cannot fly a plane in IMC without gyros. All one can do is a gentle descent, using the compass, and hope that you don’t hit a gust.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

My partial panel work has got much better since I have been flying a plane with no AI no turn co-ordinator and no DI plus no VOR, DME, ADF.
It’s surprising what you can learn by going back to basics🙂

France

EuroFlyer wrote:

can glass go partial panel ?

Happy to be able answer that old question.

Glass can go “partial”. It may lose pitot or static pressure where the respective indication of e.g. airspeed or vertical speed is deleted from the panel (it continues to show ground speed). It may lose the magnetic calibration and should indicate a red error text on the DG. It should, however, continue showing GPS directions. It can also lose GPS input and displays this. It can lose orientation so that the AI is bad oriented. It can hang up and make the software reboot. One good thing is that such “total losses” should typically be displayed, so that the awareness is quite high. However, for example, a leaking pressure tube (pitot or static) would still make the same confusion as with steam gauges. And a hanging AI could in fact be displayed without the software catching up on this. And a bad magnetic calibration can show some interesting heading indications. However, the software should in principle be able to catch up on this.

There is still progress in glass panels identifying error situations and at the same time continue to display all the rest of the information, but in a sensible way to not show anything that’s potentially compromised.

Germany

can glass go partial panel ? Or is it aal or nothing ?

Safe landings !
EDLN, Germany
81 Posts
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