Mxsmanic , IFR sensations, and some other stuff

Dudley Henriques wrote:
First of all, I've been reading a thread here where pilots are dealing
with Mxsmanic on the issue of physical sensation vs instruments in an
IFR environment, specifically when certain instrument failures are
either involved or suspected.

The following doesn't address the thrust of your post, but rather a
different point I believe I saw in the same thread and would like to
comment on:

I only spot-checked that thread so I don't know what all the claims were
(or whether what follows has already been raised.) One of the few spot-
checked posts I saw had Mxsmanic wondering why physical sensation should be
considered so important to successful flight in VMC when such sensations
are inapplicable to radio control aircraft flight and even dangerous in IFR
flight in IMC.

It seemed a reasonable point, but after a bit of thought it seemed
logically flawed and potentially dangerous when applied to VFR flight in
VMC because:

1) When flying under VFR or IFR in VMC, "see and avoid" is a regulatory
requirement - and a dang good idea. Since the PIC already must spend a fair
amount of time maintaining a visual lookout in VMC to satisfy that safety
requirement, the PIC is better off taking advantage of visual cues and
physical sensations than entirely head-down ops. Spending most of the time
viewing instruments in a standard pattern increases the probability of mid-
air collisions. Which would ruin your whole day.

2) Radio control is inherently "see and avoid" and mostly in VMC. Also, I
believe scale matters. I.e. landing an R/C plane hard doesn't always break
it, but the equivalent hard landing in a full size plane would break it.
And even with the strength/scale advantage the accident rate in R/C
aircraft operations is extremely high relative to full-size flight ops and
wouldn't be tolerated in full size aircraft. So at best, R/C ops do not
appear to be applicable. The difficulty of R/C flight may even be
considered evidence in favor of the advantage of the physical sensations
and visual cues of first-person piloting.

Jim Logajan wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote:
First of all, I've been reading a thread here where pilots are dealing
with Mxsmanic on the issue of physical sensation vs instruments in an
IFR environment, specifically when certain instrument failures are
either involved or suspected.

The following doesn't address the thrust of your post, but rather a
different point I believe I saw in the same thread and would like to
comment on:

I only spot-checked that thread so I don't know what all the claims were
(or whether what follows has already been raised.) One of the few spot-
checked posts I saw had Mxsmanic wondering why physical sensation should be
considered so important to successful flight in VMC when such sensations
are inapplicable to radio control aircraft flight and even dangerous in IFR
flight in IMC.

It seemed a reasonable point, but after a bit of thought it seemed
logically flawed and potentially dangerous when applied to VFR flight in
VMC because:

1) When flying under VFR or IFR in VMC, "see and avoid" is a regulatory
requirement - and a dang good idea. Since the PIC already must spend a fair
amount of time maintaining a visual lookout in VMC to satisfy that safety
requirement, the PIC is better off taking advantage of visual cues and
physical sensations than entirely head-down ops. Spending most of the time
viewing instruments in a standard pattern increases the probability of mid-
air collisions. Which would ruin your whole day.

2) Radio control is inherently "see and avoid" and mostly in VMC. Also, I
believe scale matters. I.e. landing an R/C plane hard doesn't always break
it, but the equivalent hard landing in a full size plane would break it.
And even with the strength/scale advantage the accident rate in R/C
aircraft operations is extremely high relative to full-size flight ops and
wouldn't be tolerated in full size aircraft. So at best, R/C ops do not
appear to be applicable. The difficulty of R/C flight may even be
considered evidence in favor of the advantage of the physical sensations
and visual cues of first-person piloting.

I would agree totally that visual references (all cues including
physical actually) are applicable to VFR flight.
RC is not my specialty and I would tend to leave these things to those
more familiar with the venue. :-)
My main concern here lies only with any IFR reference that physical
sensation is to be used in conjunction with an instrument reading or
suspected instrument error as a cross check as opposed to expanding the
basic scan to include raw data instrument substantiation and verification.

--
Dudley Henriques