(Badwater Bill) wrote in message . ..
snip
I got your phone number. I've just been flying all this week. If you
get to Vegas next weekend, call me. Just got back from Provo
yesterday. Damn IFR wx is getting me down. Our boss is buying us a
C-414 now. I get to spend today in it reading manuals on how to
operate that new Garmin 530 with the TCAS and the METAR links.

****, I'll leave you alone for a while then. Nothing worse in the
world than having to learn a new airplane and it's systems when the
relatives want to come to town to distract you. (we must be related
since Dr. "a" says were the same person.) ;-) Funny how he/she
disappeared.


That
think is so cool you can request the radar images from from
ground-based radar facilities through the satellites and get it in
real time from the ground stations. So, now we don't need expensive
on-board radar to see our way around imbedded thunderstorms, or TCAS.
They call the new traffic avoidance system, TIS (Traffic Information
System). It shows the targets that ATC is seeing and transmitting you
us on our moving map display. We get an audio alert when a new target
poses a problem to us. The computer calculates their position at the
next pass of the ground based radar antenna and projects that on my
screen. It also gives a vector showing which way the Target is
moving, his altitude and whether he is climbing of descending. Pretty
cool

snip good description of FD op

Wow. How far out can you expand to see the targets? I've always
wanted this capability. You could see how many guys are lining up for
the approach, which appr they're using. Neat stuff like that, so you
could mentally expect holding instruction from ATC, start slowing down
without being told etc. The TCAS we use is great, but you can only
see conflicts out to 12 miles away. You're going to be surprised
Bill, when you operate into Vegas during peak hours with this traffic
display, at how many times controllers are going to call traffic to
you in error. They'll say "BWB414Titan, opposite direction F-16
traffic, ten o'clock five miles same altitude turn right 30 degrees,
break other disasters bla bla bla, break, break break….etc) You'll
look out the windscreen at ten o'clock and see nothing. Then you'll
look down at your display and see a yellow going to red target at two
o'clock, look back up to two o'clock, and bingo, there he is. No time
with inefficient voice to get permission from mother earth to nix the
30 degree right order (which would have turned you right into him.)
But that controller's only human, and the gov isn't going to relieve
his peak workload until somebody get's killed *and* there's no way to
blame it on wx or pilot error etc, *and* it makes prime time. Don't
even point out the controller's **** up to him, because he'll just
have a Mallox moment for a second, and in that second somebody else on
the scope loses a traffic call-out by him. But that TCAS/TIS is neat,
neat stuff to have on board. Every time this happens a ****-eating
grin will slowly creep across your face and you'll know you're a great
pilot. But in the Cargo dog world, we won't get this neat stuff
until another near-miss with Air Force One (that's what mandated TCAS
last time for freighters.) I'm jealous of your new toys you mo fo.
;-)

Just takes hours and hours to read about and learn which
buttons to push. Hopefully I can do it about 20 times and get it
down
to a reflex.

snips

Anyway, I gotta go sit in the airplane cockpit for a few hours and
read this stuff. I can't think of a better way to spend my day.

BWB

That is how I learned every machine I ever flew. Spending hours in
the cockpit with the manual, a thermos of Java, and the black boxes
all ginned-up, to the great annoyance of mechanics (run down
batteries,) chief pilots, (big jet-A bill from running the APU,) and
management, "you weren't qualified/authorized on the equipment…neiter
neiter neiter …..
But the guys who weren't willing to do this always had "the nursing
home stare" during the oral exam because they only understood the book
theory and had no real practical experience and couldn't answer tough
questions about how to run the systems. :-o Or they suddenly got the
"deer in the headlights stare" on the first FAA oral questions. 8-o

Or worse, they got Santa Claused on the checkride and later f$#*ed up
the programming over the Atlantic somewhere and got a GNE. (which
leads to all kinds of unpleasantness including extra check rides and
unpaid vacations.

This is what really happened to KAL flight 007. Korean flights had
been off course and lost a bunch of times before the ruskies finally
got tired of it and a hero of the state shot them down. I used to
hear Tokyo repeatedly asking KAL flights to explain why they were five
minutes off their estimate (clue #1 that you have either mistyped your
coordinates or the airplane is pointed in the wrong direction in Hdg
Sel, cuz you were going around wx and forgot to return to nav mode, or
the command feature of the A/P just clicked down into manual mode
(wing leveler) without any noise. Just being in the same airspace
with Korean was a hazard. Their English was so poor they often
misunderstood what everybody else was doing. If those guys would
have at least studied on the ground, in the airplane with the manual a
little bit, it would have prevented them from smearing aluminum all
over the pacific (and killing a lot of innocent pax.)

I have the utmost respect for single-pilot-IFR operators. That is by
far, some of the most demanding flying I have ever done. I know BWB
knows this, but for any doctors or lawyers out there, just don't get
over-reliant on the flight directors. They can and will sometime
steer you into a mountain (esp. glass stuff.) Good Capts on
multi-crew intentionally ;-) screw up the FGS (flight guidance system)
that steers the FD's to see if their rookie co-pilots are "looking
through" the command bars or wands or"birds" at the raw data.
Nugget's who fly dot's through the localizer and try to blame the
other guy for not programming the FD correctly: Would get killed if
they flew by themselves. Non-reliance on guidance or ATC is the mark
of a "real stick." Real drivers always distrust the FD's and
continuously cross-check the steering commands with raw data. (G/S,
Loc,etc) (kind of like the government: you still use them, but at the
same time you really don't trust em'.) Good jocks calc a 3 to 1
descent mentally every five thousand feet and 3 degree on approach
(which is hard to do when you're busy.). Many airlines don't stress
the need for dumping the automation fast enough when it becomes
suspect. Most of the violations and fubars at my joint were caused by
guys trying to analyze why the thing did what it did. "what's it
doing now?" instead of just disconnecting and going to the lowest
level of automation: da pilot.

Lastly when you're doing a lot of IMC, take cat-naps in the closets of
FBO's (some have rooms for free if you gas and know to ask,) e.g.
while waiting for wx to lift, or nap in the airplane if you've got a
co-pilot. NASA studies show, those who do have 90% fewer errors in
the appr and landing phase.

Thus endeth the sermon today
(and you guys thought I wasn't religious!)

pacplyer - out