On 9/4/2011 11:47 AM, kirk.stant wrote:
On Sep 3, 12:27 pm, Mike
The commuter plane that crashed in Buffalo last year had a stick shaker
and it didn't seem to help them. More gadgets won't compensate for a
lack of basic airmanship.

True, but the point of the "gadgets" as you call them is to attract
attention to a condition so that the pilot can apply basic airmanship
and save the day (and his life).

Just saying "gadgets wont help" is like saying "ban all low passes" -
it totally ignores the fact that stick shakers have in the past and
will continue in the future save many lives - and that low passes are
done all the time in perfect safety by careful pilots without any
problem, while other pilots continue to crash while attempting a
simple landing.

I agree, though, that at the bottom of all this (and to our appalling
safety record in soaring) lies an amazing lack of discipline and
"airmanship" in our glider pilot population, coupled with what I
consider a haphazard system of instruction - good individual
instructors hampered by a lack of standardization, etc...

Kirk
66
I am not against all "gadgets". I just think that we need to
prioritize, given the limited amount of panel space, and equally
importantly, the limited ability of people to learn how to use all the
stuff they are putting into their cockpits.

At the top of my list would be collision avoidance gear (PowerFlarm /
ADS-B / transponder type stuff). This will potentially save a properly
trained pilot. My personal feeling is that you really aren't trained
properly if you can't sense and feel a stall coming on and don't
instinctively know what to do about it. Adding another instrument to
tell you what you should already know, just adds another item to your
scan, which distracts you from more important stuff, like looking for
traffic.

--
Mike Schumann