Being a luddite

[iflyforpie]

Tiggermoth, I've never said that you can't fly without the new technology. At some point, somebody said that he likes to fly short distances without a map, and my answer was that other people might want to fly somewhere else. The idea was that maps and gps are good.

Unfortunately, it's more often GPS and no maps..... as evidenced by the guy who landed in Sparwood one day and asked us where he was.....

[Shiny Side Up]

I love when that happens! I like how you can tell when someone gets to the end of his magenta line, then can't see the airstrip and starts doing that lonely search pattern in a haphazard grid.

[lownslow]

The trick with the panel equipment fanboys is to either not invite them to look inside your airplane or fly something so minimally equipped that their brains just sort of lock up and render them speechless.

For example, this:


LnS.

[Colonel Sanders]

I think you have an oil pressure and oil temperature
gauge (which are crucial) ...

But I would gladly ditch the whisky compass for an
analog Cylinder Head Temperature gauge. You can
get them (TSO'd) with a rotary switch so that you
can see all cylinder head temps - no electrical power
required.



Last time I flew across the Gulf of Mexico, I had pretty
much your panel. No gyroscopic flight instruments
whatsoever, and the portable GPS covered the compass,
which was ok until the GPS kicked offline.

[lownslow]

Interestingly (or not), the Continental A-40 was a terribly unreliable engine when first introduced until they addressed head cooling issues. I'd like to think they went overboard with the cooling, plus I only fly on cool days for DA reasons, plus the panel is equipped as originally imported to Canada way back when, PLUS it's not my plane to be tapping heads and installing new stuff.

LnS.

[Colonel Sanders]

Air flow can be tricky stuff. When you instrument
all the cylinders, you can learn that while 3 are nice
in the low 300's, one is running well over 400

That hot cylinder isn't going to last very long.

[lownslow]

Trouble is, with absolutely no baffling, no mixture control, and very limited throttle options (TO at max power, cruise at 75% and descend at anything less), what are you going to do about the hot one?

The other thing is that the cylinders and heads are cast in blocks like a VW. I wonder if you can even have one hotter than the other on one side.

I think if anything is going to kill this engine it will be the long periods it sits between flights.

LnS.

[Shiny Side Up]

Since resurecting threads seems to be the in thing to do, I might as well recycle this one to add to my usual ranting and raving.

I really hate gizmos cluttering up airplanes. I hate iPad mounts, I hate foreflight, I hate spidertracks, PCASs. I hate suction cupped iPhones, I hate portable GPSs, I especially hate triple redundant GPSs.

I hate when I debrief a student and ask them, "what do you feel is the thing you need to improve on?" They say: "I need to practice more with the (insert gizmo here)".

Sigh.

Swing and a miss.

No, you need to be able to fly the airplane better. You need to be able to fly so that straight and level doesn't use up all your CPU power. That's why you have a problem with those things. You also need to remember that you fly first, play with gizmos second. Well actually "play with gizmo" is like 75th or so down the list. We don't need a GPS to fly around the circuit. Neither do we need to be laying breadcrumbs while we do so.

Fly in straight lines. Maintain altitudes. Maintain stabilized approaches. Climb in straight lines.

JUST FLY THE PLANE.

Next rant: "I need to get some cross country time to be better."

[Colonel Sanders]

fly first, play with gizmos second

Been doing some instruction on an airplane with
yards of glass and no backup steam gauges.

When the pilots spend too much time inside
the airplane, I pull these nice circuit breakers
labelled "EFIS-1" and "EFIS-2" and all the
glass goes black.

Students are amazed that often they fly the
aircraft better without all these distractions -
like airspeed, altitude and RPM.

You want to play with toys, go fly a sim.

Did two surface acro sequences today. Might have
looked at the altimeter a couple times for the top
gate. Amazing I was able to do it without a MaxiPad
with Foreskin.

[imac0960]

Ah yes. The DA40: if you have a power failure in IMC, get out of it. I'm all for technology but anything is only as strong as the weakest link.

[JungianJugular]

fly first, play with gizmos second

Amazing I was able to do it without a MaxiPad
with Foreskin.

not only do I find your posts/articles useful and informative some are outright hilarious.

Thanks for making a grown man cry.

[iflyforpie]

His grandfather was in the plane second from the left....

[Colonel Sanders]

Flying in 1917 for the RFC.