The letter about glass cockpits from Lou Wagner of Bethune, S.C., was 100% correct. Glass cockpits should not be called glass cockpits. I would give it a non-professional name like “video game cockpit.”
Yes, it is modern, operated by electrical power. But what happens if you lose your electrical power — and that has happened — and you crash and burn? All airplanes should have the reliable old-style gauges and all pilots should be trained on these reliable gauges, and not on video games at home. Pilots need to be real pilots and not like kids playing games.
HAROLDI KOSOLA, Albany, Georgia
Steve Haight says
Additional a non stabilized compass and backup altimeter is required in accordance to JAR/FAR/CS23.1311 (see EAS Technical Instruction #3 – Electronic Flight Instruments for VFR Day Conditions) – “…Altitude backup can be waved, if the primary instrument has a failure rate <10-3 failures / h and the software is according DO-178B Level D…”
Steve Haight says
But what happens if you lose your electrical power — and that has happened — and you crash and burn?
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Harold don’t get a bug under yer hat he’s jist a makin sport of ye.
Don’t listen to that feller up thar. His noggin aint no bigger’n’a squirrel.
Aint no stupid questions. Just cross-eyed, inbreds who ask them.
But I think I can help you with that’n. Yep. Sure can. Hode on.
Let me fetch my 1924 Flying Machine Manual from the shed.
Let met think….what happens when you crash and burn? Ummm.
It hurts real bad like steppin on a rusty nail? But more. Or a blood blister on your banjo pickin finger. Know whut else?
The flyin machine gets bent, yer hare gets tussled. Nobody
flys with you anymore since you smell like smoke.
And by gum, I’m here ta tell ye, it wooden a happened if them dad-gummed, new-fangled, video game doohickies had a read good name like video game doohickies.
Or them useless things after my useless wife, “Roberta E. Lee”.
I hear tell that them fancy no good EE-lectronic boxes have battery backups and they have steam powered gauges too. Aircraft are an exercise in redundancy.
Oh sorry; big word for ya. Redundant? Well mister Georgia high-tech feller who whittled his own airplane on his porch expert, I reckon that means kinda like having a BACK UP an all yer doodads. Two ways to do things. Say yer door bell gets full up with terbakky spit and falls off the screw whut holds it on the door, you know, where you bang it against the door? Well you got a back up right? Old Blew, your yeller dog, he’ll hear the revenuer at the door and commence in ta barkin fer a spell.
And then lets say yer dog don’t bark on a cuzza that time ya kicked him square in the thote when yews drunk on shine and you thot he was an alien from planet Hot-Pocket and the poultice that you were fixin to affix to fix him didn’t hold none? Well then a coarse ya got cher morbidly obese, bed-ridden, sweaty one toothed sister/wife ta commence a hollerin. “Hey POOKIE, I’m busy watching ‘You Are Dumber Than a Piller Case Full a Hair’ and eatin them left over deep fat fried fat balls and raccoon end-parts, I got my big oh swoll up cankles up on the pile of pallets we use for a coffee table and there’s some revenuer at the door – would ya kindly be kind enough to kindly see fit to commence to gettin the shotgun and run him off again POOKIE?”
But really:
You have the entire WORLD full of information at your fingertips and you write a “Hey I Live Under A Rock” post like that?
I hope you aren’t actually a pilot. Are you a gator-skinner at the reptile farm or are you a pilot? If you are, stay out of my airspace. You are dangerous as hell; living in the 1920s.
And when you land I will be obligated foller you and show you what it feels like to crash and burn. Anything to get you out of the gene pool.
Thanks for your consideration in this matter.
Steve Haight
Vero Beach
Steve Simmons says
Harold, I couldn’t agree more. In addition, these fancy automobiles with thair “inflatable tires” are dangerous as well, and we should stick with horse and buggy and wooden wagon wheels, you know, “real” transportation. Idiot.