Editor at Large Dave Hirschman and frequent contributor Chip Wright debate the merits of glass versus steam.
Not your father’s instrument panel
It just keeps getting better
By Dave Hirschman
When my teenage daughter recently learned to drive, I wanted her to do it the same way I did—with a manual transmission. But since she has no interest in vintage cars (and I don’t own one), she got her license in her mom’s automatic. And that turned out pretty well.
By the same logic, the best IFR trainer is the one most relevant to a student’s ambitions. If he or she aims to fly airliners, military or corporate jets, modern helicopters, or general aviation aircraft built in this millennium, a glass panel is almost certainly the way to go.
That’s heresy to pilots of my generation who like to brag of their talent at interpreting shaky VOR and NDB needles and shrugging off vacuum-pump failures. But take that with the same shovel of salt that we did when disregarding the doleful protests of an earlier generation who foresaw the replacement of turn-and-slip indicators and radio ranges as harbingers of doom. The happy fact is that technology improves, sometimes rapidly, and GA pilots who fly in clouds are the big winners.
GPS is better than loran, which was better than VORs, which were better than NDBs, which were better than lighted airway beacons. If those leather-skinned pilots of yore could have had in-cockpit weather, active traffic systems, and synthetic vision, they would have taken them in a New York minute—and been grateful.
It may seem unfair that glass-panel IFR pilots are deprived of character-building “needle, ball, and airspeed” partial-panel drills that we practiced. But they will be more adept at using glass-panel technology to stay away from dangerous weather, avoid terrain, fly a greater variety of approaches with far better accuracy, and execute missed approaches with stress-free ease. Hopefully, they’ll soon be able to add new tricks such as following traffic at fixed intervals during instrument arrivals and departures.
And don’t let anyone convince you that learning single-pilot IFR in glass-panel airplanes is easier than steam gauges. It’s just different. So much information is available on glass panels that pilots need focus, discipline, and practice to process and manage it. Sure, flying actual approaches gets simpler, with video-game “highway-in-the-sky” symbols, but loading and activating the descents and approaches on flight management systems can be complex.
When I was an IFR student, I struggled to learn the proper technique for holding pattern entries, a subject that still can be vexing to teach. But does performing a teardrop entry using a directional gyro make me more virtuous than a fellow pilot following the self-generated magenta line on a G1000? Not a chance. It just means that my reptilian brain is fully engaged turning to a heading and altitude, while the glass-panel pilot has the luxury of a higher order of thought.
The military maxim, “Train like you fight, and fight like you train” seems oddly appropriate here. Instrument students should become intimately familiar with the tools they’ll rely on when they’re out in the real world, approaching minimums at night with rain beating against the windshield. Their training shouldn’t be swayed by the way their parents learned to fly—or drive.
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Fly using the basics
Put the building blocks in place
By Chip Wright
The analogy of deciding whether or not to teach your teenager to drive stick shift is an apt one for this discussion. In my mind, the answer is yes, because while there aren’t as many manual transmissions as there used to be, if you find yourself in a situation where a manual is the only option, it sure helps to know how to use it. My kids—both girls—already know they’ll be learning to drive a stick.
Learning to fly IFR on steam gauges is the same way. When you learn to fly IFR in a non-glass airplane, it’s not just a case of repeating what I learned to do. It’s learning to fly IFR using only the basics as we know them today. While NDB approaches are rare, VOR-to-VOR navigation is still a viable way to get from A to B, and the most common approach at any airport served by an airliner, or equipped with ATC and radar, is the ILS.
The problem with flying a glass airplane is that the screens provide so much information that there isn’t a whole lot of thought involved. As long as you can follow the magenta line, situational awareness is—in theory—maintained. Take the pilot who was trained in a glass airplane and put him in a well-equipped, non-glass airplane, and ask him to find his way, and I’m willing to bet he has a hard time with it.
When you learn in a steam-gauge airplane, you’re forced to think in a three-dimensional way that you are not asked to do a lot with glass. More important, you’re forced to stay in that mode. You need to truly understand how a back course works. You need to truly understand reverse sensing, the VOR cone of silence, and how to perform a holding pattern with only one VOR. In fact, you need to be able to compute the entry to the hold without a racetrack being drawn on the screen to guide you. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t use an autopilot if one is available. But even with an autopilot, you need to understand what is going on around you.
The main argument against learning to fly in steam-gauge airplanes is that they are slowly being removed from the fleet. That’s true. But the operative word is slowly. Upgrades are expensive, and if you are looking to purchase your own airplane, it’s quite possible that you’ll buy one with steam gauges with intentions of upgrading it. And maybe you’ll actually do that—but maybe you won’t.
Another argument against steam gauges is the reliability of glass. It’s true that the glass displays and the modern AHRS and ADCs are incredibly reliable. But, they do fail. And when they do, so goes your moving map, your magenta lines, and all your other gee-wizardry that you find yourself banking on (pun very much intended). The question is, can you handle the challenge of transitioning from having all that information to having virtually none of it—and keep the airplane going where you actually want it to go?
And it is fair to assume that you may find yourself needing to rent an airplane that is capable of IFR flight, but only has steam gauges. How will you handle it?
I learned to fly IFR using paper charts and steam gauges in the Cessna 172. The first airline aircraft I flew had an EFIS and EHSI and no moving map. My next one was the RJ, and it was all glass, save the steam-driven backup ADI, compass, and airspeed indicator. Same with the 737 I fly now. Whenever I find myself doubting what I’m seeing or feeling, I turn to the old-fashioned peanut gyros, and everything I need to know is right there.
It’s easy to say one should learn using the latest and greatest. Don’t think of the steam gauges as a relic. Use them as a stepping stone to master the basics of instrument flying, including partial panel. Then, once you have the building blocks in place, move up to glass. You’ll be able from that point on to go back and forth. Just like learning to drive a stick shift.
Chip Wright is a frequent contributor to AOPA publications and an airline pilot.
