Scenic overflight
A Pilatus PC–12NG peels off. PC–12s come with tabs on their ailerons to reduce roll forces.
Where: Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming
Photographer: Mike Fizer
I strap into the simulator and look around the cockpit. It’s a Pilatus PC–12NG cockpit in a simulator at Simcom, where I trained for one of this month’s articles. What I see are four large display screens with line-select keys. And a keypad. And a tiny joystick surrounded by an equally tiny rotary wheel. And a trackball flanked with data entry keys. And next to that trackball is a small wheel that looks like a miniature trim wheel, but isn’t. All this gear gives the pilot access to the airplane’s Honeywell Apex avionics suite.
I can’t seem to make the suite play well, and I know why. I usually fly with Garmin equipment. And Garmin’s “knobology” is nothing like the Apex’s.
Time to pan the moving-map display. I’ve learned that the trim-wheel-that-isn’t does this, so I foolishly move it like a trim wheel. “No, no, to the side,” says the instructor. Seems that to move the map horizontally you press against the side of the wheel, and then hold it. With Garmin gear you push the Range button, and then move it in the direction you want to pan the map. The button is even labelled “Pan.”
I’m not singling out Honeywell or Garmin as examples of dissonant operating systems and methodologies. I know that going from Collins to Garmin avionics, and vice versa, is challenging. Ditto going from legacy (old) avionics to new.
Why not come up with a standard operating system for every manufacturer? For example, right now, it seems the only common keys—the ones that say what they mean—are Direct; Enter; Flight Plan; and the Heading, Altitude, Course, Yaw Damper, Flight Director, and Autopilot keys. Can we expand this list? To learn each system’s ways, it can take 25 to 30 hours of flight experience, I am told. Maybe that’s the real reason that newly typed pilots are made to fly their first hours as pilot in command under supervised operating experience rules.
Maybe Microsoft Word can help those of us who blunder through an avionics learning curve. Word’s Undo (backwards curved arrow) and Redo (forward curved arrow) keys would be useful after an “oops” moment. Didn’t mean to wipe out that waypoint? Hit the undo key. Now all we have to do is convince the FAA that Microsoft can give avionics manufacturers a run for their money. Fat chance.
—Thomas A. Horne, Turbine Pilot Editor
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