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?

There's a pressure transducer somewhere for the glass panels that convert
the air pressure into an electrical signal that the computer can understand.
The computer then draws the instrument on the display. There are separate
sensors for pitot and static.


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?

Depends on where the clog is. If all the instruments in the cockpit that
depend on static pressure are plumbed to a single static port on the
airplane body, and that static port clogs with ice, then all the instruments
including the computer are affected. You might able to use alternate static
source to get around it. Know your aircraft systems..... the glass displays
may or may not share the pitot static system plumbing with the old gauges.


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

Thanks,

Scott