Have you ever tried to break the glass on one of them instruments? It's
pretty damn hard to do and impossible if you don't have a good sized
hammer. In my 182 I know exactly where the static lines are under the
panel. In the event both static ports get blocked I will reach for the
static line near my left shin and pull it off the fitting. This is
infinitely easier than busting a pretty small piece of glass and won't
end up costing me any money.

Scott Schluer wrote:

I've got a question about the glass panel displays in the C182 (or any other
aircraft for that matter). I was reading this month's edition of AOPA Pilot
magazine and the cover story is the C182T and the new glass panel displays
Cessna decided to incorporate and it got me thinking. My question is: how
does a glass panel display take information received from the pitot-static
and gyro systems and translate that into the display? On "standard" panels,
the pitot-static and gyro systems power the instruments be means of a
mechanical linkage between air pressure differentials or gyros and the
instrument display itself. Now, on a glass panel, I'm assuming that
mechanical linkage is no more. Is everything I know about how instruments
work out the window with glass panels?

For example, if my static source becomes clogged, I would assume that the
pitot-staitc instruments on the glass panel would be affected the same as
they always were. But can I still break the glass on one of the other
"standard" instruments using static pressure that the 182T still
incorporates for redundancy (airspeed, altimiter)? If I broke the glass on
the standard altimiter for example (assuming my glass panel was fully
functional so that I wouldn't need to rely on the standard altimiter, but
the static source was blocked causing erroneous indications), would that
allow static air pressure to flow where it needs to in order to accurately
reflect on the glass panel display also?

I'm just a little confused as to how the glass panel instruments actually
work. Can someone provide an explanation?

Thanks,

Scott