AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2015 - 12

LETTERS

FROM OUR OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE

Avionics evolution
Have complicated modern avionics affected airmanship? Barry Schiff's take on the subject
struck a chord with readers.
but I always knew I needed to
properly fly the airplane.

PROFICIENT PILOT

Avionics evolution

BY BARRY SCHIFF

It used to be a lot easier, didn't it?

BARRY SCHIFF

has held five
world aviation
records and four
national records.

IN THE BEGINNING, a flight instructor sat in the front seat
of an open-cockpit biplane and communicated with his
student in the rear using hand signals and occasionally
yelling over wind and engine noise. At times he would
have to throttle the engine to make himself understood.
The first intercom was the gosport speaking tube,
named after the flight school in Gosport, England,
where it was invented and first used (1917). The instructor spoke into a small metal funnel, and his voice carried
through a rubber tube to the other cockpit. The single
tube split into a pair of shorter tubes that led to both
sides of the student's helmet. The student listened to his
instructor as a doctor listens with a stethoscope.
Many of us who learned to fly in the decade following World War II got to use general aviation's first
popular two-way radio. This was a Motorola low/
medium-frequency receiver (complete with vacuum
tubes) and a single-frequency HF transmitter. Range
was limited-some believed that megaphones were
more effective-and fine-tuning the "coffee grinder"
receiver to the proper frequency often required the
pilot to ask the tower to recite a "short count for tuning."
There were no intercoms in those tube-and-fabric
trainers, and the most common way for an instructor
to communicate with his student was to shout through
a rolled-up aeronautical chart. Sitting in the back seat,
he also could express displeasure by swatting the back
of a student's head with said chart, a practice to which
as a not-so-great student I served witness.
Avionics technology in general aviation took a leap
forward in the early 1950s when Narco introduced its
Superhomer. This box combined a coffee-grinder VHF
receiver and a four-channel transmitter with the revolutionary omni (VOR) receiver and display.
Pilots really began to live high on the hog a few years
later when Narco unveiled its Omnigator. It included
27 transmitting frequencies that were selected and
installed at the discretion of the owner (depending
on the frequencies he most commonly needed). The
Omnigator also had whistle-stop tuning, a slick feature
that assisted a pilot in tuning the receiver. Assume that
a pilot was approaching an airport where the tower frequency was 118.1 megacycles. He would digitally select
the proper transmitting crystal (frequency), activate the
whistle-stop tuning feature, and then slowly crank the
tuner until in the vicinity of the desired receiver frequency. As he neared that frequency, he would begin

to hear a whistle in his headset. He would continue
fine-tuning until the whistling reached a peak. He then
turned off whistle-stop tuning and knew that he was
tuned to the proper frequency. Whistle-stop tuning,
however, soon became obsolete with the availability of
90-, 180-, 360-, and 720-channel transceivers. Then we
changed from kilocycles (kc) and megacycles (mc) to
kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).
Despite the wide variety of navcom receivers from
various manufacturers that saturated the market in
ensuing years, they all had one thing in common: they
were user-friendly and could be operated intuitively. A
pilot could step from one airplane to another and not be
concerned about knowing how to operate the avionics.
That began to change, however, in the early 1990s.
This is when avionics manufactures began to develop
and introduce integrated avionics units. These revolutionary systems combined moving-map displays, GPS
and VOR navigation systems, sophisticated database
access, and VHF communications in one box.
Although such systems were and are incredibly
capable, they are neither intuitive nor user-friendly. In
many cases, getting checked out in a new airplane can
require spending more time learning to use the avionics than learning to fly the airplane. Add primary flight
displays (PFDs) and multifunction displays (MFDs) to
the mix, and you can appreciate why training in such
airplanes emphasizes learning to use the electronics systems and deemphasizes the actual flying of the airplane.
Consider a pilot that is already checked out and
current in a make and model of airplane equipped with
steam gauges. At many flight schools he may not rent
the identical airplane if equipped with a Garmin G1000
integrated flight deck without first undergoing significant additional training. Learning to use the avionics
takes more time and study than getting checked out in
the airplane in the first place.
Integrated flight displays and automated flight control systems obviously increase situational awareness
and in-flight safety. Obtaining the proficiency and adapting to what can seem like an overwhelming amount of
flight information, however, needs to be accomplished
without sacrificing the airmanship needed to operate the airplane skillfully-a challenge that we need to
spend more time addressing.
AOPA
WEB

www.barryschiff.com

16 | AOPA PILOT October 2015

While reading Barry Schiff's
piece "Avionics Evolution," I
found I couldn't agree more
with his concluding paragraph.
When I started flying in
1968, my training airplane was
a Cessna 140. On one of my first
lessons, I looked toward the
bottom of the instrument panel
and noticed a box-like contraption. I asked my instructor
what it was. He said, "It's a
radio. Don't touch it!" Needless
to say, the box stayed cold and
silent for many lessons.
I think I had about 30
hours in the airplane before he
taught me how to turn on the
radio and use it. It was a "coffee
grinder" Narco Superhomer or
something similar.
The important point is that
he wanted to teach me to fly.
Talking on the radio and using
a VOR came much later.
During 40 years making my
living as a pilot, 35 as an airline
pilot, I often found myself
thankful that my first instructor
was a hard taskmaster who
taught me to fly. All the rest
of those wonderful avionics
miracles helped immensely,
12 | AOPA PILOT December 2015

Alan Edgren
AOPA 1465245
Punta Gorda, Florida

Dogfight: Glass
or steam?

I enjoyed the October
"Dogfight" over glass or steam
cockpits. I am one of those
strange breed of pilots who
learned to fly at 55 years old in
a G1000-equipped Cessna 172.
That's all I ever knew and that
is what I subsequently bought.
I did most of my instrument
training elsewhere and I did it
in a 1972 Cessna 172, which
was all steam gauges, stacked
radios, et cetera. Pure vintage
stuff. But I finished up and did
my instrument checkride in a
G1000. (I passed.)
In hindsight, I actually
found the steam gauges easier to fly IFR. Headings and
altitudes were easier to hold
for the simple reason that the
instruments were not as sensitive. There was no "chasing
the tape," and keeping the
needles centered seemed
more intuitive than chasing
the ball.
Less information; more
ability for my simple mind to
focus.
That being said, would I
trade the glass panel in my
present Cessna 182 for steam
gauges? No way! But I think
(I hope) I am more adept at
handling that information
overload now than I was as a
student pilot.
Rich Iott
AOPA 4560736
Monclova, Ohio

In top form

I enjoyed your article regarding
AOPA's "Reimagined" program,
and the restoration/repurposing
of those (dare I say vintage)
personal aircraft. Where did
the time go? It doesn't seem all
that long ago.
I had the great fortune of
learning how to fly in '83 to
'84 at my local FBO. I was just
25, and my wife, Donna, surprised me with a Piper "Blue
Sky Solo" course. I had the time
of my life. We had little money
for this, and at the end of earning my private ticket we simply
didn't have the money to go on.
A day hasn't gone by where I
haven't cast my eyes skyward
and wished it were me as an
airplane flies over. However,
with the prospect of further
education costs, purchasing a
home, et cetera, buying, renting, or even occasional flying
was simply out of the financial
equation.
Now, at 57, my wife and I
look back at the past 30 years,
and realize we've both been
very successful and grateful.
Just starting to contemplate

Thanks for a
most informative
a r t i c l e ( " S av v y
Maintenance:
Tectonic Shifts"). It's
so well written that
I'd have finished if the
subject were knitting
supplies.
Gary Mello
AOPA 838454
Cambridge, Massachusetts

retirement, blowing the dust
off my old logbook seems to be
a possibility, especially with the
emergence of "older" but solidly refurbished aircraft like
Two-Uniform-Charlie.
Maybe it's a sign, but I
recently renewed my membership to AOPA, purchased some
reading material to help bring
me up to date on flying, and have
made a couple of trips to the local
FBO to investigate what is needed

What's on your aviation bucket list?
Learning to fly or increasing
your certificates and ratings

27%

Owning a certain type
of airplane

26%

Flying to a new destination

28%

A new flight experience

10%

Other
Aviation eBrief poll

8%
10%

27%

28%
26%

http://www.barryschiff.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2015