Question for Fellow CFII's regarding Partial Panel Training

Ron Rosenfeld wrote
If the aircraft is capable, total failure of the electronic
flight instrument display, or a supporting component, with access only to
the standby flight instruments or backup display shall be evaluated.

FWIW - the new PTS is available online at http://av-info.faa.gov/

The new PTS is IMO a great improvement over the old. It spells out a
lot of things that should be obvious. If the aircraft is capable of
autopilot coupled approaches, one must be demonstrated - however, an
approach without autopilot use must still be demonstrated. Does this
put an unfair extra burden on the applicant with a more capable
aircraft? Yes and no. Yes, it's an extra burden. No, it's not
unfair. More advanced equipment requires more advanced training.

This last, though, bothers me. Not because it's inherently wrong, but
because I sense it will be abused by flight schools. When ADF was
required (and it was - before the great rewrite of Part 61, your long
IFR XC had to include an NDB approach) it was impossible to get an
instrument rating without an ADF. This put an unfair burden on owners
- many of them had no real need for an ADF (especially those with IFR
GPS). The rewrite dropped the requirement. Flight schools promptly
started to remove ADF receivers from their trainers. If you don't
have it, you don't have to teach it. In reality, it only takes about
an hour or so for a student to become proficient with ADF approaches -
provided he is already proficient with other non-precision approaches
AND he really understands the difference between heading, bearing,
course and track. You can get by on other approaches without
understanding this difference (though not if you want to consistently
fly them well) but not the NDB approach - without a real and
internalized understanding of these concepts you can't fly a decent
full procedure NDB at all. Learning these concepts and internalizing
them can easily take 10 hours.

I suspect something similar is going to happen with this requirement.
It's already possible to have an IFR airplane with no steam gauges at
all, and that's really not a bad thing. However, to make this safe
for real IFR you need a lot of redundancy. Owners who opt for this
generally assure that level of redundancy. I have the nasty feeling
that we're going to see panels designed for flight schools, and that
these panels are going to be designed in such a way that it will not
be possible to test partial panel skills, without any great concern
for redundancy. That way, it will not be necessary to teach the
student to infer attitude rather than reading it directly off the
attitude indicator.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I know the solution is NOT to
require obsolete steam gauges when modern electronics can do the job
better, just as the solution is NOT to require an ADF in the plane for
an instrument checkride.

In the end, the best solution may turn out to be a pad of post-it
notes for the CFII and examiner.

Michael