So Much Work For Those Two Words - Instrument Airplane

Matt Whiting wrote:
I made my first flight in actual yesterday from ELM to BFD and back.
Shot the GPS to BFD and weather was below minimums so I got to shoot a
real missed approach in actual, something I'd never done before. We
didn't plan to land at BFD anyway, but it was fun to fly along at the
MDA and seeing next to nothing. My instructor did catch a glimpse of
the runway as I was climbing out, but we'd have never gotten down to it.

I may be reading more into that last statement than you intended (and if
I am, please correct me), but I'm wondering what you would have done if
you thought you could have gotten down to it?

Once you decide to go missed, all efforts to find the runway should stop
and your full attention paid to flying the airplane, getting it climbing
again and navigating the missed procedure. You never want to get into a
situation where you start the missed, catch a glimpse of the runway,
change your mind about the missed, and make an attempt to land.

With two pilots, the other pilot (in this case, your instructor) should
have been exercising a little CRM by monitoring your instruments to make
sure you've got positive rate of climb established, followed checklist
items like gear and flaps up, and are following the right track.
There's no value to his looking out the window to see if he can catch a
glimpse of the runway.

The next transmission came from a different voice, and a much less
grouchy one I might add, and cleared me direct ELM. Still not sure
what happened, but I think he was overloaded, forgot about us and
didn't hear the missed call.

Yeah, sounds like it. The only thing to do in this situation is
remember the "aviate, navigate, communicate" mantra. Sort out the
confusion with ATC, but make sure it doesn't distract you from your
primary task of flying the airplane.

Roy Smith wrote:

Matt Whiting wrote:

I made my first flight in actual yesterday from ELM to BFD and back.
Shot the GPS to BFD and weather was below minimums so I got to shoot a
real missed approach in actual, something I'd never done before. We
didn't plan to land at BFD anyway, but it was fun to fly along at the
MDA and seeing next to nothing. My instructor did catch a glimpse of
the runway as I was climbing out, but we'd have never gotten down to it.


I may be reading more into that last statement than you intended (and if
I am, please correct me), but I'm wondering what you would have done if
you thought you could have gotten down to it?

Nothing as we didn't plan to land, it was simply a round robin training
flight. My instructor was simply pointing out that even though we saw
the runway at that point, it wouldn't have been sufficient to execute a
landing.


Once you decide to go missed, all efforts to find the runway should stop
and your full attention paid to flying the airplane, getting it climbing
again and navigating the missed procedure. You never want to get into a
situation where you start the missed, catch a glimpse of the runway,
change your mind about the missed, and make an attempt to land.

I agree. I was flying the missed ... it was the instructor who was
looking down for the runway.


With two pilots, the other pilot (in this case, your instructor) should
have been exercising a little CRM by monitoring your instruments to make
sure you've got positive rate of climb established, followed checklist
items like gear and flaps up, and are following the right track.
There's no value to his looking out the window to see if he can catch a
glimpse of the runway.

I think it was more curiosity on his part as to how well I'd flow the
approach. I was less than one bar off at the MAP and I believe the 89B
is something like .3 NM full scale after the FAF. So, I should have
been only about 0.06 NM off the runway.


The next transmission came from a different voice, and a much less
grouchy one I might add, and cleared me direct ELM. Still not sure
what happened, but I think he was overloaded, forgot about us and
didn't hear the missed call.


Yeah, sounds like it. The only thing to do in this situation is
remember the "aviate, navigate, communicate" mantra. Sort out the
confusion with ATC, but make sure it doesn't distract you from your
primary task of flying the airplane.

Trust me, I did. I was flying the missed procedure whether the
controller liked it or not. We were in actual, with ceilings less than
500' over mountainous terrain. No controller was going to distract me.
However, the missed at Bradford for this GPS approach was pretty much
a straight ahead climb to a hold, so it didn't take a lot of effort to
fly it.

I'm still not a fan of the King 89B. I flew with a Garmin when I had my
Skylane and, at least for me, the Garmin was much easier to learn and
fly. The King with its cumbersome knobs for page and option selection
simply isn't intuitive. I much prefer arrows for menu selection as it
more closely mimics a keyboard. Whoever dreamed up using a rotary knob
for cursor movement should be banished from avionics design!

I'm sure I'll like the 89B more as I gain familiarity, but the interface
just doesn't seem natural as compared to the Garmin which operates much
more like a PC or PDA. Even my instructor, who has flown this airplane
for many years with the 89B, still doesn't have it all figured out and
occasionally turns the know the wrong way or can't find the page he
wants at first. I can see why Garmin became so popular, so fast.


Matt

Matt Whiting wrote:

I'm still not a fan of the King 89B. I flew with a Garmin when I had my
Skylane and, at least for me, the Garmin was much easier to learn and
fly. The King with its cumbersome knobs for page and option selection
simply isn't intuitive. I much prefer arrows for menu selection as it
more closely mimics a keyboard. Whoever dreamed up using a rotary knob
for cursor movement should be banished from avionics design!

I'm sure I'll like the 89B more as I gain familiarity, but the interface
just doesn't seem natural as compared to the Garmin which operates much
more like a PC or PDA. Even my instructor, who has flown this airplane
for many years with the 89B, still doesn't have it all figured out and
occasionally turns the know the wrong way or can't find the page he
wants at first. I can see why Garmin became so popular, so fast.

FWIW, I first learned on the 89B (and later the 94, I think). I now fly
club airplanes that are all 430ed. I find the BK more intuitive. I
suspect that "intuitive" in this case really means "most like that on which
I learned".

After all, it's not as if we've evolved for GPS use grin.

On the BK, for example, I never turn the knob the wrong way. I often do
with the Garmin; it just seems backwards to me for some reason.

However, I do need to add a caveat: I've been using computers and graphical
interfaces since well before MSFT entered the market. To me, "PC
interfaces" (ie. the MSFT window manager) seem terribly counterintuitive.
The modal Apple interface is, to me, no better. But the same reasoning
("not what I first learned") applies here.

One win the Garmin has for me over the BK (there are a few, but this is the
largest) is that the Garmin is more easily read. If I were starting from
scratch, that could very possibly put me in the Garmin buyer's camp.

- Andrew