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jtrain609 · May 6th, 2007, 12:53

Naw not at all, I just don't know how to use the damned things to be honest with you. I've got such a limited experience with autopilots and flight directors that in most situations I look at how you guys would use an autopilot and think, "So ahh...I mean we do that crap with our hands all the time, isn't it more intuitive to do what you've been trained to do and just fly the thing yourself?"

But for me it goes a little further than that and into any automation at this point. We had an essential bus kick out on us the other night in a King Air which dumped the cabin, we lose the boots, all the instrument lighting, an inverter, blah blah blah. Basically half the airplane dies. We declare and start setting up for the VOR approach back into Oakland and I try to plug it into the GPS and after about 10 seconds I'm like, "Huh, this thing doesn't work like a 430...whatever, I know that we're on a left downwind on vectors, I don't need this thing" and happily go back to working on monitoring the aircraft to make sure the captain doesn't make any wrong moves (the AP and FD were on the same bus, BTW, so they were also useless at this point).

So when I see a crappy situation happening, I start cutting away technology even when I have it, but when things start going bad for you guys you're trained to start turning it on so you don't have to actually worry about flying the plane and you can put more attention into watching all the mass of systems in your aircraft. Just a different training philosophy for different equipment types.

May 6th, 2007, 12:53	#12
jtrain609 Old Skool Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Park City, UT Posts: 12,883	Re: Late notice windshear Naw not at all, I just don't know how to use the damned things to be honest with you. I've got such a limited experience with autopilots and flight directors that in most situations I look at how you guys would use an autopilot and think, "So ahh...I mean we do that crap with our hands all the time, isn't it more intuitive to do what you've been trained to do and just fly the thing yourself?" But for me it goes a little further than that and into any automation at this point. We had an essential bus kick out on us the other night in a King Air which dumped the cabin, we lose the boots, all the instrument lighting, an inverter, blah blah blah. Basically half the airplane dies. We declare and start setting up for the VOR approach back into Oakland and I try to plug it into the GPS and after about 10 seconds I'm like, "Huh, this thing doesn't work like a 430...whatever, I know that we're on a left downwind on vectors, I don't need this thing" and happily go back to working on monitoring the aircraft to make sure the captain doesn't make any wrong moves (the AP and FD were on the same bus, BTW, so they were also useless at this point). So when I see a crappy situation happening, I start cutting away technology even when I have it, but when things start going bad for you guys you're trained to start turning it on so you don't have to actually worry about flying the plane and you can put more attention into watching all the mass of systems in your aircraft. Just a different training philosophy for different equipment types.