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Doug Taylor · September 16th, 2004, 10:53

[ QUOTE ]
But if GA manufacturers are all transitioning to glass cockpits, shouldn't pilots become as proficient with those as the old steam gauges?

[/ QUOTE ]

Good question.

But here's an angle on that. "Steam gauges" more or less are all pretty much the same so reading instrumentation in a classic 747 is pretty much the same as interpreting them in a Piper Cub. However, glass cockpits come in all sorts of bizarre setups, configurations and screen types.

Like the MD-88 is 'semi-glass' mixed in with steam gauges. The MD-11 flat panel display was fully glass with no steam and it took about 2 minutes to figure out what I was looking at.

So the question I would have would be if we train private pilots on the usage of glass cockpits, do we just train for the flavor of the displays in their training aircraft? Or do we use computer-based training to train in the top three display configurations?

I know it's probably not a big deal, but I'm just playing devil's advocate.

September 16th, 2004, 10:53	#11
Doug Taylor Agent Smith Join Date: Dec 1969 Location: KSDL Posts: 42,209 Blog Entries: 1	Re: GA Glass Cockpit Training [ QUOTE ] But if GA manufacturers are all transitioning to glass cockpits, shouldn't pilots become as proficient with those as the old steam gauges? [/ QUOTE ] Good question. But here's an angle on that. "Steam gauges" more or less are all pretty much the same so reading instrumentation in a classic 747 is pretty much the same as interpreting them in a Piper Cub. However, glass cockpits come in all sorts of bizarre setups, configurations and screen types. Like the MD-88 is 'semi-glass' mixed in with steam gauges. The MD-11 flat panel display was fully glass with no steam and it took about 2 minutes to figure out what I was looking at. So the question I would have would be if we train private pilots on the usage of glass cockpits, do we just train for the flavor of the displays in their training aircraft? Or do we use computer-based training to train in the top three display configurations? I know it's probably not a big deal, but I'm just playing devil's advocate.