Tweaking the throttle on approach

It still surprises me that moving a lever to extend or retract gear makes an
aircraft complex. An autopilot or GPS is a lot more complex than a gear
lever.

Its called 'pilot workload'.

In a real aircraft, you must:
-Fly the Plane
-Operate The Aircraft Systems
-Keep track of your current location
-Communicate with ATC
-Keep Watch for Traffic
-Plan your future track (or reference your flightplan), this includes
making absolutely sure you remain clear of all restricted airspace.

All in a reasonably loud, chaotic setting, with absolutely no option
to 'pause'...

Your sim covers 1 and 2 well... 3 and 6 ok (The various ways that
simulators try and 'trick you up' navigation wise are very poor
approximations of the real situations that come up... and restricted
airspace is a non-issue). and 4 and 5 are jokes (pressing an
'acknowledge' button gives you absolutely no sense of how critical it
is to keep constant track of ATC's dealings with the other aircraft
around you... whose transmitters are 1960s vacuum tube technology and
who all have different accents/ways of talking and traffic scanning on
a monitor is nearly impossible)...

So basically, in your little flight simulator, you are dealing with
MAYBE half of the 'real-world' pilot workload... AND you have a pause
when you get overwhelmed...

Aircraft Systems (but not avionix) dictate an aircraft's complexity
simply because those are the aspects of flying that the pilot cannot
time-shift, cannot get away from, and who knows what else he'll need
to be doing at the time. The complexity of an aircraft has nothing to
do with its 'mean' level of pilot involvement, its the potential
'worse-case' level of pilot involvement (low on fuel, landing in the
dark at an unknown towered airport, for example) that dictates it
because there simply is no option for the pilot workload to exceed his
capabilities at any point during the flight- the results would be
fatal.

Of course, you would know this if you had ever actually sat in a
cockpit, instead of trying to tell us that we're incompetent because
your little simulation (no matter how accurate it is at covering what
it does) simply does not take into account the full range of
experiences and requirements placed on a pilot...

But I guess its my problem now because I'm bothering to respond.

On Mar 9, 1:33 pm, "EridanMan" wrote:
It still surprises me that moving a lever to extend or retract gear makes an
aircraft complex. An autopilot or GPS is a lot more complex than a gear
lever.

Its called 'pilot workload'.

In a real aircraft, you must:
-Fly the Plane
-Operate The Aircraft Systems
-Keep track of your current location
-Communicate with ATC
-Keep Watch for Traffic
-Plan your future track (or reference your flightplan), this includes
making absolutely sure you remain clear of all restricted airspace.

All in a reasonably loud, chaotic setting, with absolutely no option
to 'pause'...


I couldn't agree more!

I have been in situations where I desperately wished I could pause the
flight, one time it was because I was trying to work out where I was
over hostile and rugged terrain with no landmarks at all, while having
to fly around clouds, up valleys, not sure if my heading calculation
worked out when I had to divert was correct, which was worked out
using a map and protractor while flying through heavy turbulence,
trying to keep the wings level with my knees while working the heading
out, while dealing with an aircraft with absolutely no navaids and no
gps, a badly drifting DG, and no way to fly straight and level long
enough to reset it, flying over tiger country, and then I came to some
flat land I found I was just about right above an airfield I didn't
recognise that wasn't on the map, and having to scramble through my
map collection to find that I'd gone off the edge of my map and was
less than 1/4 mile from military airspace, all the while having to
look out for other aircraft, and fly my aircraft, the one with two
different wings that flies in circles unless you keep a heap of rudder
in the whole time...

chris writes:

I have been in situations where I desperately wished I could pause the
flight, one time it was because I was trying to work out where I was
over hostile and rugged terrain with no landmarks at all, while having
to fly around clouds, up valleys, not sure if my heading calculation
worked out when I had to divert was correct, which was worked out
using a map and protractor while flying through heavy turbulence,
trying to keep the wings level with my knees while working the heading
out, while dealing with an aircraft with absolutely no navaids and no
gps, a badly drifting DG, and no way to fly straight and level long
enough to reset it, flying over tiger country, and then I came to some
flat land I found I was just about right above an airfield I didn't
recognise that wasn't on the map, and having to scramble through my
map collection to find that I'd gone off the edge of my map and was
less than 1/4 mile from military airspace, all the while having to
look out for other aircraft, and fly my aircraft, the one with two
different wings that flies in circles unless you keep a heap of rudder
in the whole time...

This is why God invented autopilots, copilots, and advanced instrumentation.

It sounds like you drifted into this situation by not anticipating and
planning beforehand. Necessary tasks that are deferred just tend to pile up,
and then they all have to be done at once.

There will always be some type of situation that is too complex to handle, no
matter how much training or practice you have. It is therefore necessary to
avoid such a situation. It traps even the best and most experienced of
pilots.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

EridanMan writes:

Its called 'pilot workload'.

In a real aircraft, you must:
-Fly the Plane
-Operate The Aircraft Systems
-Keep track of your current location
-Communicate with ATC
-Keep Watch for Traffic
-Plan your future track (or reference your flightplan), this includes
making absolutely sure you remain clear of all restricted airspace.

All in a reasonably loud, chaotic setting, with absolutely no option
to 'pause'...

Sounds doable, with a bit of practice. I don't have much trouble with it in
the sim.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Sounds doable, with a bit of practice.

Of course its doable, we do it all the time.

I don't have much trouble with it in the sim.

Utterly irrelevant statement... You mastery of an arbitrary task-load
designed to approximate a pilot's workload with a substantially
constrained interface says nothing.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

EridanMan writes:

Its called 'pilot workload'.

In a real aircraft, you must:
-Fly the Plane
-Operate The Aircraft Systems
-Keep track of your current location
-Communicate with ATC
-Keep Watch for Traffic
-Plan your future track (or reference your flightplan), this includes
making absolutely sure you remain clear of all restricted airspace.

All in a reasonably loud, chaotic setting, with absolutely no option
to 'pause'...

Sounds doable, with a bit of practice. I don't have much trouble with
it in the sim.


Snort!



Bertie