single pilot ifr trip tonight

On the way back from OSH this summer, we punched through some nascent
cumulous formations (in a C172). While partial panel is something that
we all practice (right?), and, even without a GPS as a backup, is not
that difficult to handle under some (most) circumstances, the few short
forays into the clouds lead me to investigate an electric AI. Although
we were only in the bumpy stuff for a few minutes at a time, I quickly
realized that I would be hard pressed to keep the plane right-side-up if
the vacuum system went south. I love my handheld GPS for general
situational awareness, but I'd much prefer an AI. (Nice spot for it,
too, right under the VSI. We'll need to remove the round G meter that
the original owner I guess thought would be worth while in a 172?)


David Megginson wrote:
Ray Andraka writes:


I've found that I can fly the airplane IMC with just the HSI page on my
Garmin III Pilot as long as I keep the control inputs gentle. Doing this,
my instructor covers all the flight instruments. Update rate is a little
on the slow side, but as long as you keep your turns gentle it is very
doable.


My concern is that in moderate turbulence it's much harder to keep
control inputs gentle. On my last trip in IMC, for example, I hit a
couple of jolts that tipped me past 20 deg bank in a fraction of a
second. I'd like to know how well the GPS HSI page works in that
situation (I acknowledge that the TC is also tricky when the air's
that rough, since it has a slight lag built-in).

Has anyone tried using the HSI page on a handheld GPS in moderate
turbulence? I'd be very interested in hearing the results (especially
if it was on a cloudy day or at night, when there were no light or
shadow clues).


All the best,


David


--
Remove "2PLANES" to reply.

In article ,
Dan Truesdell wrote:
We'll need to remove the round G meter that
the original owner I guess thought would be worth while in a 172?)

Sounds like a good rule of thumb: Never buy a non-acrobatic airplane
that a previous owner thought could use a G meter.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

Michael,

It's silly to give
that experience away to a gadget.


And it's less silly to die while not doing it???

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Ben,

Never buy a non-acrobatic airplane
that a previous owner thought could use a G meter.


I like it!

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

David Megginson wrote in message ...
(Nathan Young) writes:

1. Vacuum failure -- no immediate, direct benefit from the handheld
GPS.

I disagree for several reasons. Many GPS models have the ability to
partition the main display and show an 'HSI' and groundspeed in
addition to the moving map.

That could be a nice indirect benefit, but the danger is ending up
with yet another distraction. The GPS pseudo-HSI display is much
easier to interpret but lags dangerously, while the TC and ASI are
harder to interpret but have minimal lag. I'd be nervous that in an
emergency my eyes would be drawn too much to the false security of the
GPS pseudo-HSI display instead of where they should be, on the TC and
ASI.

Your statements that the GPS lags dangerously are inaccurate (at least
wrt to the Garmin 295). The HSI updates quick enough to show heading
changes of a few degrees as long as the bank angle is kept under a
reasonable amount, say 10 degrees. Easy to do in smooth or light
turbulence.

However, I don't think you could keep the plane level (solely with
reference to the GPS) on a cumulus filled day - the kind where you
have to wrestle the airplane to stay on course/heading/altitude.

-Nathan

(Nathan Young) writes:

Your statements that the GPS lags dangerously are inaccurate (at least
wrt to the Garmin 295). The HSI updates quick enough to show heading
changes of a few degrees as long as the bank angle is kept under a
reasonable amount, say 10 degrees. Easy to do in smooth or light
turbulence.

The lag is time, not heading. How long does it take a heading change
to register? I've heard that it's at least a second on the 196, and
sometimes two seconds or more on the 295, but I don't own either.


All the best,


David

(Nathan Young) wrote:
Your statements that the GPS lags dangerously are inaccurate (at least
wrt to the Garmin 295). The HSI updates quick enough to show heading
changes of a few degrees as long as the bank angle is kept under a
reasonable amount, say 10 degrees. Easy to do in smooth or light
turbulence.

A friend of mine and me tried an experiement once. I put our Archer
into some unusual attitudes, and he recovered using just the synthetic
instruments on his handheld GPS (Garmin something-or-other, might have
been the 295 but I'm not sure). Conditions were night VFR, no
turbulence.

What we discovered was that the pitch information you get from the ASI,
VSI, and AI was pretty much worthless, but heading info was useful.
When he tried to level the pitch, he just ended up chasing the
instruments badly. If he ignored pitch (let the trim take care of it)
and just used rudder to zero out rate of turn on the synthetic TC, he
did pretty well.

The Archer is a pretty stable plane. I have no idea how well this would
have worked in something like a Bonanza. I also have no idea how well
it would have worked in turbulence. We were also assuming that the
plane had previously been trimmed for level flight and the power and
trim settings hadn't changed. With something like runaway trim, this
would have obviously been much harder (I'm guessing impossible).

Thomas Borchert wrote in message ...
Michael,
It's silly to give
that experience away to a gadget.

And it's less silly to die while not doing it???

(tieing threads together or branches of threads together)
Here IMO we go back to the difference between something
which is useful in a tight spot vs. a matter of life and
death

A pilot whose skills are such that not using the autopilot
is a matter of life and death is in trouble, with or without
'George'.

But if 'George' is there, in order for 'George' to be useful
in a tight spot, the pilot has to be proficient with George.
He has to know 'George's quirks, how to set George up boomboomboom
without extra brain cycles, and to what extent he can trust
George (or not). Anything less IMHO leave George out of the
picture.

Frankly, IMHO Michael contradicts another of his posts to
speak of "silly to give that experience away to a gadget".

An autopilot is just like a fancy MFD or a moving map GPS or
any other piece of cockpit equipment which can make life
easier *or* cause dependence, and the point he himself makes
in a different post applies. More equipment means more flying
to maintain proficiency with and without ALL the equipment in
the cockpit.

Personally, I look to people I respect totally from what I
know of them, and if people like my instructor and Stan Gosnell
speak of the benefits of SP autopilot use in being able to
develop and maintain a better grasp of the "big picture"
single-pilot, I'm listening. I've never seen the Richard
Collins tape and I don't know anything about him personally,
not meaning to 'dis' him, he's just not on my personal 'scope
and the sort of plane he flies (Cessna Truck) doesn't speak
to me.

BTW I speak of "tight spot" rather than "emergency" quite
deliberately because IMHO many (most?) abnormal situations
never become emergencies because of the quality of the choices
the pilot(s) make. We've been in 4-5 what I consider "tight
spots" which could easily have become emergencies and 0
emergencies so far, partly through luck partly through our
choices. And the quality of choices directly depends on the
quality of the "big picture" the pilot is able to maintain.

Anyone who thinks they can maintain the same quality of "big
picture" single-pilot while hand flying 100% of the time
as they could if they let 'George' take it judiciously,
I think is kidding themselves (or maybe handling a Flying Truck).
Just like anyone who thinks a cell phone ought to be a higher
priority than a GPS for in-flight emergency use (*g*) but
again that's their issue.

Cheers,
Sydney

Snowbird,

A pilot whose skills are such that not using the autopilot
is a matter of life and death is in trouble, with or without
'George'.


Agree.

As I said befo Here in Germany, single pilot IFR is legal only with
an autopilot with ALT hold on board.

Without knowing for sure, one of the possible factos for the Kennedy
accident is that he was not proficient enough with the autopilot to let
the machine fly anything but straight and level, e.g. the descent that
was initiated and started the accident sequence. The AP in that
aircraft would have been capable of doing a descent.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Thomas Borchert wrote:
Without knowing for sure, one of the possible factos for the Kennedy
accident is that he was not proficient enough with the autopilot to let
the machine fly anything but straight and level, e.g. the descent that
was initiated and started the accident sequence. The AP in that
aircraft would have been capable of doing a descent.

That's not what I get from reading the NTSB report. It says:

"The airplane was equipped with a Bendix/King 150 Series Automatic
Flight Control System (AFCS) [...]

The AFCS installed on the accident airplane had an altitude hold mode
that, when selected, allowed the airplane to maintain the altitude that
it had when the altitude hold was selected. The AFCS did not have the
option of allowing the pilot to preselect an altitude so that the
autopilot could fly to and maintain the preselected altitude as it
climbed or descended from another altitude."

Still, I would imagine you could leave it in "heading hold" mode,
disengage altitude hold, reduce power a bit, and the plane would enter a
perfectly controlled descent just based on trim. And I agree that a
polot properly trained in use of the autopilot should have known how to
do that.