Worried about talking on the radio

[digits]

Pilots - other than weirdos like me - love huge avionics stacks.

I think they are useless for VFR and deadly for IFR in little airplanes.

Let me explain. We know you don’t need anything more than your phone to navigate VFR.

For IFR, GA pilots today are doomed to certain death if they can’t program all that crap, because they can’t hand fly a departure or an approach.

Without an autopilot, GA pilots are dead in cloud.

Would you like me to list recent accidents?

How would you hand fly an RNAV approach, arguably the most commonly used IFR approach nowadays without one of the more modern stacks?

[John Swallow]

This is my panel... Wish I'd put an EMS and an autopilot in it.

I've got 8000 hours hand flying; I don't need the practice.

Besides, the AP is good when you're leading somebody in poor viz...

[Colonel]

You probably won’t believe me, but back before GPS and moving maps, we were expected to be able to hand fly partial panel NDB approaches. Try that sometime.

How about a DME arc using only an OBS and DME readout?

That was a perfectly normal approach at nearby CYRP.

[John Swallow]

“You probably won’t believe me…”

I do.

And before that, there were aural null procedures to ascertain timing, distance, and homing which would culminate in an approach. It was much easier when using the full function of the ADF.

Then there was the radio range with its lost orientation procedures and subsequent approach. The neat thing about RR approaches is that all you had to do was fly the airplane and listen…

Instead of VOR, the military went TACAN (at least for their jet fighters and trainers). There were lots of TACAN arc approaches with rules of thumb of how to change degrees into miles and miles into degrees so as to not overshoot/undershoot an arc or a radial. I wonder how many people remember how to go “point to point”…? (You’re on the 265 radial at 80 miles and you’re cleared “PP Direct” to the IAP on the 015 radial at 35 miles correcting for high level winds as you go...)

For whatever reason, the military didn’t do the ILS route, (again, at least not for the jet fighters and trainers of which I was acquainted) and, as the radio range and TACAN approaches were just cloud break procedures, the military had precision radar to get us down to limits of 200 – ½.

Which is to say that I’m a fan of the new technology: in the amateur build world, you can have moving map and 3D capabilities for an extremely reasonable price. It has been a game changer…

[Colonel]

It has been a game changer

Sure has been. And the problem is that people become dependent upon it, and can't deal with
a failure, and if if misbehaves or freezes or feeds them garbage, they are Bambi on the 401.

I have told the time of checking out new RV owners with glass cockpit and no steam gauges.
One of them told me he expected to die (in perfect VFR Wx) if they failed.

Maybe that's the new normal in the 21st Century, but I was fucking horrified. I pulled the breakers
on all the glass panels and we started up and went flying with no engine or flight instruments. None.

And you know what? He did just fine! We did this ancient thing (unknown to today's pilots) called

ATTITUDE + POWER = PERFORMANCE

See, you can look outside for the "big attitude indicator" called the horizon. And if you look at the
throttle position, you can get a pretty good idea of the power setting.

Don't get me wrong. I loved all that complicated shit. But don't expect it to work, and when it doesn't
you'd better have a Plan B which is something other than "it's time to die"

Sometimes, take a look at the millions of lines of code behind all that shit in your panel that you are
betting your life on. Are you serious? You're cool with all those ignored compiler warnings? You're
ok with extending signed to unsigned?

PS GCA/PAR/whatever-you-want-to-call-it were the easiest approaches I ever flew. Or rather, that
the guy on the ground flew. I was just a radio monkey, doing what I was told, and gosh, it worked
out well.

PPS I would love to see today's kids try to fly an arc with just an OBS and dme readout. It would
be fucking hilarious. They would have to "visualize" which like navigating with heading and time,
is lost in the mists of time.

PPPS Dear Old Dad and his buddies talked about this "AN" navigation thing, and this wild procedure
for flying a box for getting unlost. It was surreal, and now long-forgotten. People thought an ADF
was tough!

[John Swallow]

Andrew:

I really don't know what you're on about.

"Don't get me wrong. I loved all that complicated shit. But don't expect it to work, and when it doesn't you'd better have a Plan B which is something other than "it's time to die""


Seven years my Dynon equipment has worked flawlessly. I don't fly it IFR but know that it would get my down in a pinch. And a lot safer than following an ADF needle. We're talking VFR pilots here, not some of the cowboys that may be prevalent in the US.


Would I bet my life on millions of lines of code? Don't people now do that all over the world? How do all the various instrument approaches get stuffed into those little boxes on the panel and then resurrected in front of the crew?


About today's young folk and their 'inability' to execute the things we did yesterday: they'd do just fine with training. You forget that when your father - and I - were learning how to execute that "Lost Orientation and Let Down", many times, we drove the link trainer into the ground forty miles north of Sumspot, SK because we couldn't fine the cone of silence and/or drove the "crab" off the instructor's desk. .


Andrew; from this and other posts, you seem to have a hate on for younger pilots with less experience. What's up with that?

[Big Pistons Forever]

Back when I was a full time instructor I got assigned a student who needed to do an initial Multi IFR course. He had 8000 hours on a Twin Beech on floats and loved bush flying. However his wife was tired of living in BumFuck Ontario and so he figured he would move over to an IFR job down south.

Not surprisingly the guy could fly the pants off the flight school POS Seneca1, and he picked up the IFR procedures quickly, but his radio work was just painful.

At one point he could see I was getting frustrated at his mangled radio calls and apologized saying “ Dave yah got to realize for the last 10 years pretty much the only thing I used the radio for was to order lunch at next lodge I was flying to “

[Colonel]

John: I want to live in your world

[John Swallow]

Andrew:

"Live in my world"?

You'll get there. Another twenty-five years and several ailments and you'll be able to fit right in!

Enjoy what you're doing now and stop being so hard on the young folk...

[Colonel]

I will try.

A serious problem is that there is no one to teach them - all the good guys are gone.

Today's pilots are so infantile. They need someone to tell them what they need to learn,
and then they need someone to spoon-feed them a course like babies.

No one ever told me what I fucking needed to learn, and I was always self-taught.

Thinking about this, I taught myself:

1) tailwheel flying (I watched Dad, and he screamed at me for a little bit - I had no brakes on my side)
2) instrument rating (read a book, self-taught, corp pilot signed off the flight test)
3) my TCA ATPL and FAA ATP (read a book for each one)
4) aerobatics. Got some spin recovery training in California. Self-taught solo.
5) formation flying (never flew in same airplane as Dad. Self-taught solo)
6) formation aerobatics (asked everywhere for help, none given. Self-taught solo)
7) low altitude aerobatics. No one teaches this. No one. Self-taught solo
8) low altitude formation aerobatics. Hahahahahahahahaahahahahahahah.
9) inverted (-ve G) formation & formation aerobatics. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Plus many, many weird self-checkouts on all sorts of bizarre types. Again, no dual, ever
which really pissed me off. Spent decades listening to war stories about the Beech 18
for example, and when one showed up at the airport, all those blowhard hero pilots
scattered like cockroaches and guess who had to teach themselves to fly a Beech18?



Me in the right seat, giving dual on the Beech 18. Don't look at the tach.

And I don't mind having to do the above. Weirdly, while I was doing it, I was continually
shit on for decades by Canadians that I was stupid and a shitty pilot and I didn't know
much about aviation or anything else for that matter. Somewhat incongruent, no?

Reminds me of my 421 checkout, which consisted of one flight in Peterborough with
some @sshole that clearly thought I was too stupid to ever fly a 421. Ok. We'll go with
that. I'm really, really fucking stupid compared to a Canadian. Got that.



Anyways. The combination of ignorance, incompetence and infantile behavior that I
see in today's pilots, somewhat grates on my nerves. Sorry about that. Shoot the
messenger. Got that.

Best pilot I know today, Rob Holland. Did he get that way by getting more dual than
anyone else, from all of the FBO instructors around the country?

hhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

No. He did not become the best, because he has more dual. He is entirely self-taught.
No one taught him to do this. He taught himself.



Spot the pattern.

Infantile behavior is not to be encouraged or admired. Figure out what you need to
learn - no one will tell you - and then teach yourself that material, because no one else
will.

This is called being an "adult".

Hint: Life skills that apply to aviation, also apply to other areas of your life. Think about that.