TINA SRISVASTAVA: OK, so when
we were talking about radar, we had a great reminder
about how the origins of that came right here at MIT. And in fact,
physically right here, where the Stata
building is located. Well, when we're talking
about instrument flying, there is also a very strong
connection here to MIT. So does anyone know the
story of Jimmy Dolittle and his first blind flight? Yes, do you want to share? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] TINA SRISVASTAVA:
Yes, you're right. He has a lot of good stories. AUDIENCE: Takeoff and
landing [? just on ?] flight instruments. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
Takeoff and landing just on flight instruments, yes. Good, that's exactly right. AUDIENCE: He also
got a doctorate here. TINA SRISVASTAVA: He also
got his doctorate here, that's right. You have a good
understanding of him. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] TINA SRISVASTAVA:
So Jimmy Dolittle, before he came to MIT, was
flying in the military. And he was doing
a lot of things. He's known for flying across the
country in a very short period of time and encountering a
lot of storms and weather. And being one of the first
people to really rely on the instruments
inside your planes-- all your flight controls-- when you're not able to
look outside the airplane. And just as you
said, he studied here and got his graduate
degree here. But even after
that, he continued to study how a
pilot could fly when the visibility outside the
airplane was very difficult-- and really pioneered the concept
that in a very foggy weather condition, for example,
you can still successfully fly an airplane by relying
on the flight instruments. And in particular, one of
the most significant flight instruments is what's called
an artificial horizon. So Philip already introduced
that flight instrument. We'll talk about it. And when we've discussed
the six-pack, where you have these six circle
flight instruments, it's the one in the
middle on the top. And we'll look in
that in particular. So that artificial horizon
with a little airplane on it is basically supposed to replace
looking outside your windshield and seeing the real horizon. And so it's a good
thing to rely on. One of the most important
instruments when you're flying. So basically,
instrument flying is how you can rely
on the technologies inside your airplane
to avoid hitting things and to land without being able
to see outside your airplane. And IFR stands for
Instrument Flight Rules. And so that means that you
have to follow a set of rules when there are clouds outside. Now, because pilots
really need to make sure to practice
and stay current, we have a situation where
most of the time that people are practicing that
instrument flights might be a condition
where actually it is quite sunny and beautiful outside. But they're just practicing. So the way that
we distinguish it is when it's actually
very foggy, very cloudy, you can't see outside-- that is described by IMC,
or Instrument Meteorological Conditions-- IMC conditions. So that's when you actually
have the condition where you can't see
outside the airplane and then you follow your IFR,
your Instrument Flight Rules. And so the goal of
this whole process is to be able to fly
safely, even when you can't see out the window. So why would you want
to be flying when you can't see outside the window? There are a lot of
reasons for that. I've been spending a lot
of time in California. And here's a familiar
sight in California. If you see a lot of
clouds, a lot of fog-- fog is a daily
occurrence, depending on where you are, especially
in the San Francisco Bay Area. And so a VFR pilot
won't be able to really fly in those conditions at all. PHILIP GREENSPUN: It's
important to remember, it's beautiful
right above the fog. So you could be flying in
the clouds for a minute and then you proceed to your
destination in the desert or wherever it is. TINA SRISVASTAVA: Absolutely. So Philip was just talking
about a condition just shown in this picture
here, where it might be the case that there's
a thin layer of clouds or fog at a low altitude. But if you were to go
through that, above it, it's really beautiful
up above the clouds. And sometimes this
is called VFR On Top. So you have Visual Flight
Rules up on top of the clouds. It's not that you're
flying in the clouds, but you have a cloud
cover below you. And so if you have your
instrument flight rating, then you can fly right
through that thin layer of clouds or fog and be flying
in a beautiful day above that. I'd also like to point out
that instrument flying makes you a better pilot. So I know this personally-- if
you remember from yesterday, I talked about how
after my private, basically one of the
first things I did was start on my
instrument flight rating. And you actually start
with just learning how to be a better pilot. You start sticking to your
altitude a little better. When you're a VFR
pilot, a lot of times when we talked about
the different airspace, there isn't a very strict
restriction on what altitude you need to be at. You're not really
filing a flight plan. You could be
changing your heading and wandering over one way and
wandering over another way. But when you start training
for your instrument, you start learning more
precisely what it takes to trim your aircraft's
configuration correctly, how to stay at 3,000 feet,
1-8-0 heading, whatever it is-- and actually maintain
that while you're doing a number of other
operations in your plane. And not getting
distracted in such a way that causes you to change
your heading or your altitude. So that just makes you a
better pilot altogether, even in visual
flight conditions. The reason, of course, that you
have to learn how to fly more precisely is because when
you are in an actual IMC condition with
clouds and you can't see outside your
airplane, you're relying on the air
traffic controllers to sequence the airplanes
and make sure they don't come near each other. And so the air
traffic controller is going to want to
know that if they tell you to stay on a particular
vector-- so an altitude heading. And they want to make sure
you actually stay there, because if you start
drifting off-course, you could drift into the
course of another airplane that they have flying in
a different direction. So you actually
are required to do some amount of
instrument training, even for your private pilot-- about three hours. So that means that
you have to go flying and rely purely on the
instruments in order to fly. So it would be great
if there is a day that has fog without an
adverse weather situation so you could actually fly
in true IMC conditions, where your instructor is
really taking control there but allowing you
to experience it. But if that doesn't happen, you
can use a view-limiting device, such as foggles. So these are basically
glasses you put on that fog out where you would
see outside the window and only are visible looking
at your controls. Or a hood that basically
blocks your view of everything except the instruments. So we've already talked
about radar and ATC and working with those
air traffic controllers. So those air traffic
controllers are responsible for the
separation of the airplanes. And they will assign
specific altitudes, headings, and different routes
and clearances. Navaids is short for
navigational aids, like radio and GPS. And then we've already discussed
just now about a transponder. So that xpdr just
stands for transponder. And that's just basically
saying that if the radar itself is unable to provide the
accurate altitude of the plane, you can add on the transponder
to help with the radar return. We've also discussed
briefly the ADS-B-- and we will get into, when
we talk about weather data, how you can build your
own device to receive that ADS-B data. So let's talk about the
different phases of an IFR flight. So there's a little
bit more you need to do in the flight planning stage. You also do need to
file a flight plan, which we discussed isn't
required for your VFR flights. And then some more
things you need to do once you depart,
when you're en route, and then your
approach to landing. So what Philip
helped me pass out are what's called
approach plates. So you'll hear that-- so it's different information
that talks about-- when you're landing, they're
different specific procedures. Because, again, you can't
see outside the airplane, so they will create a
path that you fly on that are specifically designed
to avoid terrain and allow you to come in and land
at the airport safely. Although I passed out the
physical piece of paper-- and a lot of people have
physical pieces of paper for those approach plates-- I've also pulled up an airport. I used Bedford,
my local airport. And you can go
down on ForeFlight to approach and see all the
different approach procedures. So I'll pass this around. And basically you can click on
different approach procedures. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Let me also
add that all these plates are available free online. If you go to any source,
like SkyVector or AirNav.com, you can go to the airport and
see a list of the procedures and just grab the
PDF on your device. TINA SRISVASTAVA: Absolutely. They're all free online. And you want to make sure
you have the updated ones, because sometimes
they do change. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah, I meant
just here for the lecture. If you just want to have it
in front of you on your phone. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
Yeah, absolutely. Pre-flight planning is
just really important. As much as we just talked
about meteorology and different adverse weather
conditions-- so just because you have the ability to
fly in the clouds doesn't mean it's a good idea. If there is anything
like thunderstorms, icing conditions, something
that could impair your ability to fly safely, then it doesn't
mean you should go flying. And it's really
important to understand where all the adverse conditions
are and look at all that data. So when you're doing
your pre-flight planning, there's certain
information about when you need to have an alternate. So the time and hour before-- an hour after your
estimated time of arrival. Your ceiling-- so
what's a ceiling again? That's when you
have cloud cover-- so either broken
or overcast clouds. So they're saying
if that ceiling is less than 2,000 feet. And then your visibility--
so how far out you can see-- three miles. And one of the biggest rules
of thumb to keep in mind is that when you're
doing this planning, you don't want a situation where
you take off from an airport and you plan it such
that the weather is going to get so bad that you
can't return to that airport. So a good, safe rule
of thumb is make sure that you can get back to the
airport you're taking off from, in case there's any issue
with your airplane or travel. You want to be able
to safely get back from where you took off from. And even though with
your IFR rating, you can fly through
clouds, there are still specific
visibility requirements for every single
approach and airport that you're coming into. It can't be a completely dense
fog all the way to the ground. There is a altitude where
even the big, major commercial jets have to be able to identify
certain runway indicators before they're allowed to land. And if they're not
able to, they have to go around or find
an alternate airport. And all that
specific information is on those approach plates that
we'll talk about in a moment. So you can actually file
a flight plan directly on the computer or with an
app, such as ForeFlight. This is what I was
discussing a moment ago. This is your six-pack, again-- your flight controls. And the one right in
the center at the top is that artificial horizon. And just as Jimmy Dolittle did-- found that as a very
important reference point. That's really what
you want to spend most of your time
looking at when you're flying the instrument. Just like when
you're flying VFR, you want to spend most
of your time looking out the window at the actual
horizon and what's out there. You want to look at this to
make sure you haven't started turning and not realized it. So we're going to get into
human factors this afternoon. But just like we talked
about when we were discussing aerodynamics, your
body can't really feel the difference between
gravity and acceleration. And so if you start a turn
but then you basically have even doubt in
your flying level, your body will not notice
that you're tilted. And so that's why
it's really important to keep an eye on this
artificial horizon and make sure you're
in fact flying straight and level when
you think you are. So we're going to talk about
a lot of different safety considerations. We talk a lot about
minimums with regard to what are the FAA
regulations or your flight school might impose-- the place you're renting
your aircraft might impose. Certain minimums--
that they don't want you to take the plane
unless the ceiling is above 2,000 feet, for example. But there is also this
concept of personal minimums. And Philip and I will
spend a chunk of time at the end of the course talking
about our personal minimums and sharing them
with you, that you might want to set your own
restrictions-- that, hey, if certain things are occurring
and you don't feel comfortable, you don't think
it's safe, you set those restrictions to yourself. So that way, on a particular
day that you're planning to fly, you don't get the
get-there-itis, where you just really want to go
and you decide you're going to do whatever it takes. You can refer to your personal
minimums and say, hey, I have previously decided
that this wasn't a good idea. So let's stick to my judgment
at that time and not fly. We're also going to discuss
how, even though the FAA might require only a single
pilot in command, you can actually have a
different person sitting next to you, whether they're a pilot,
whether they're just a friend, you can put that person
to work to help you out in managing your cockpit
and helping with some of the navigation, for example. So let's talk a little bit
about the approach plate. So does everybody have
an approach plate, either on their computer or
a physical piece of paper? Is anyone missing one? OK, so there's a
lot of information on an approach plate. And you don't need to know any
of this for your private pilot. But just so you
get oriented, I'm just going to give you a
high level of what kind of information is on
this approach plate and what we're talking about. So again, this is
a situation where there could be cloud cover
or you're flying in fog and so you can't see
outside your airplane or you can't see
the airport, but you have to safely arrive
at the airport. So the approach plate
provides a flight path for you to fly on to safely enter
the airport's vicinity, enter the final approach,
and then to a point where you can visually identify
certain runway markings and land safely. So the very top of
the approach plate tells you a lot of information. So the top right corner,
where it says RNAV GPS-- that's identifying the type
of approach that it is. So usually, it'll
tell you whether it's a precision approach or
a non-precision approach. So there are different types
of instruments on your plane. You'll see, as that iPad's
being passed around, with the different ones
you can click on-- there are certain instruments
in your plane and at the airport that will
tell you how you can land. So an ILS, for example-- an Instrument Landing System. If that is available, it
can be a very precise way to land at an airport, whereas
if you don't have exactly those things available, you
might use a GPS or a VOR, which are different types
of approaches you can fly. It'll also tell you the runway,
which is very important. Runway 16-- so that's the
runway you're trying to land at. And then just below
it is the airport. So this one in
particular is Port Smith, which is an airport
that's basically-- if you drive to the
coast from here. So it's at the border between
Maine and New Hampshire, right along the coastline. And people refer to
this airport as Pease. You also see a lot of very
specific information-- a lot of numbers and things there. So we've discussed a few
times the concept of ADAS. So you see that ADAS-- so that's
the frequency you can dial into to get the weather
information at that airport. And you'll need to
get the latest weather information before you enter
and start doing the procedure. You also see the air
traffic controller here is Boston approach, who you'll
be talking to on 125.05. You see the Pease tower,
or Portsmouth tower-- 128.4. And then after you land,
here's the ground controller that you talk to. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Tina,
do we have to worry about those other numbers? Like 269? TINA SRISVASTAVA:
Let's make it simple and say, no, you
don't have to worry about those other numbers. PHILIP GREENSPUN: OK,
those are for the military. That's UHF. And you won't have that
in your rental Piper. TINA SRISVASTAVA: Another
really important thing to pay attention to is
at the top right corner is a missed approach. So if you were not able
to complete the landing-- maybe you had to go around
or something didn't feel safe or you lost communications
when you were coming in-- and you are not able
to execute the landing, then you fly a missed approach. So it tells you what to do
if you weren't able to land. So it says climb to
3,000-- so 3,000 feet-- direct-- and it says
this TTATT is the name of a particular location. So, TTATT. And then it says, and
on track 165 degrees-- so that's the heading-- to IDEED and hold. So it basically says that
if you weren't able to land, then you're supposed to continue
straight, climb to 3,000 feet, to this TTATT location. And then on the
track 165 degrees, to continue on to
IDEED and hold. So now the middle of
the approach plate really tells you what to do. There a couple different points
that are really interesting. So IAF-- does anyone
know what IAF stands for? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
Approach Fix. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
Initial Approach Fix. So these are places where
you can enter this pattern. So IAF-- you can
enter here at ITAWT. There are a couple
others here as well. So what it's saying is if
you entered here at ITAWT, you're flying at
3,000 feet on heading 118 degrees to this
holding pattern right here. And every time it has
these weird letters is representing another point. And then you continue
straight towards the airport, to this other spot. And then here is
the actual airport-- it says runway 16, where
you could land right here. And if you have a
missed approach, remember it said to
continue straight to TTATT and then to continue on to
IDEED and you can do a hold over here. So aviators are not
without a sense of humor. So let's just go through
what that would be. What are the names of
the points along the way? You start with ITAWT,
ITAWA, PUDYE, TTATT-- IDEED. So I'm getting a
lot of chuckles. In case you missed that, it's
I thought I saw a putty-tat. I did, I did see a putty-tat. Anyway, good cartoon
for you there. So that shows you a
little bit of humor in this particular
approach plate. The bottom of the approach
plate shows the same thing, but a profile view. So this shows the
altitudes as you're going. So you start at 3,000. This is your heading, you're
going along into ITAWA. And then you go down,
you're descending to PUDYE. And then all the way
here, where you land. And if you have to
execute a missed approach, then it pictorially describes
that missed approach, which is you continue
straight at 3,000 feet, climb to 3,000 to TTATT and
then on heading 165 to IDEED. And then here on
the left, of course, is a picture of that runway. And it tells you what
the runway looks like, the taxiways around
it, the length of the runway, et cetera. PHILIP GREENSPUN:
What are the minimums? How low can you go
before seeing the runway? TINA SRISVASTAVA: The minimums
depend on the type of aircraft that you have. I was skipping over it because
it's fairly complicated. But this whole thing
down here basically indicates the minimums in
terms of your visibility as you're landing. So where it says category,
it's the different types of categories of aircraft. Circling means that if you were
planning to land at one runway, but you circle to land
at another runway. And then it has a lot
of specifics depending on the actual type of aircraft. PHILIP GREENSPUN: What
about in a CIRRUS? A modern CIRRUS? TINA SRISVASTAVA: You
can go ahead, Philip. PHILIP GREENSPUN: OK. So that top one is LPV. That's essentially a precision
approach using the GPS. So if you have a WAAS GPS,
which is the modern kind, as of about 10 years ago,
you can go down to 300 feet. So if you don't see some
indication of the airport environment, the runway
leaving lights or something, then you can't go
below 300 feet. It is time to do a missed. And it also tells you you
need 2,400 feet of visibility. TINA SRISVASTAVA: In
this case, that 300 feet is regardless of the category,
whether it's a, b, c, d, or e-- they all show that same amount. And when Philip is talking
about depending on the type-- whether you're reading here
the LPV, LNAV, et cetera, on the left. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah, like
the LNAV approach down there, towards the bottom, that would
be for an older non-WAAS GPS. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
So there's obviously a lot more information
on this approach plate. But those are some of the
key highlights so you don't get afraid when you see these. Any questions before we
move past this topic? Yes. AUDIENCE: This is
a stupid question, but I've actually looked at
this approach plate before and I didn't get that joke. Is there somewhere you can
look up why they named them what they are? Or who named them? TINA SRISVASTAVA: Oh yeah,
that's a good question. So basically, if you
missed the joke-- the I taught I taw
a puddy-tat joke. Is there a place
you can look it up? I'm not sure. But I know a couple
of people that write different
articles about aviation. It'd be a good exercise to
see if we can Google and find a couple of those articles and
share where they figure out how they name all
these different points. OK, so if you want to learn-- yes, go ahead. AUDIENCE: What are the speeds? TINA SRISVASTAVA: The speeds. Yeah, absolutely--
so what speed do you have to be as you're flying
these different approaches? Do you want to tackle it? PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah,
I'll just talk about that. If you're in a
really busy airport, they may tell you to keep your
speed up so that you don't clog up the works for the jet. And also autopilots
don't work that well if you're going really slowly. So it's probably conventional
in something like a CIRRUS to be going around
120 knots before you get to the final approach fix. You're going to put in one
notch of flaps just before. And 120 knots is the limitation
on an older CIRRUS, for flaps. So you'll slow down
to maybe 105 as you're going down the glide slope. And then once you break
out of the clouds-- let's say at 500 feet
above the runway-- although, the minimum there
was 300 above sea level, which is 200 feet above the runway. You put in the full
flaps and you'll slow down to your final approach
speed of 75 or 80 knots. So those would be the typical
speeds on a precision approach. TINA SRISVASTAVA: And if
you're practicing, you're new, it's OK to go a little slower. They'll tell you if there
are other people behind you. Holds are a good time-- the whole point is to basically
take time and slow down. They're trying to get you
to wait for some reason. So you might want
to go 90 knots. The reason you don't want
to go much below that is, of course, you are doing
so many things in the airplane to get prepared
for the approach, you don't want to get down
into very slow air speeds where you could stall as well. That could be a big issue. So now just talking
about how you go on to get your instrument
flight rating. There's some good resources
here to point out. And this talks a little
bit about the time-- that XC just stands
for Cross-Country Time. Then you actually need time
and in actual IMC conditions or in simulated. So that's where you're
wearing your goggles or your foggles or your hood. And again, you can actually do
a little bit of simulated flight training as well. So some places have
a red bird simulator or other types of
simulator where you can do some simulated flight time. Sometimes that'll
save you a little bit of money, because you don't
have to spend the engine hours to fly out to wherever
you're doing the approach. And you can just
restart very quickly. So there could be some
advantages of that. And then, Philip, you
have some advice here on how you get your IFR rating. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah, I think
if you're going to do this-- once you finish your private--
these higher performance airplanes aren't
great for training. The little Pipers and
Cessnas are probably better, just because they're slower. But as soon as you're going to
work on the instrument rating and do transportation, then
it's time to get into the CIRRUS or get into the Bonanza
that you're intending to use for family transportation. Time and type and realistic--
going with an instructor on the trips that you're
actually going to do-- is invaluable for safety. I think one good way to do it
is do a big cross-country trip with an instructor. Or just go to Florida, go
to California, go to Alaska. And do an approach every hour. So then you go through
a lot of weather systems and you get very comfortable
with getting the weather information, filing flight
plans, working with controllers in different situations. TINA SRISVASTAVA: One
other thing I would add-- it's a cool trick you
might not have heard of. So whenever you're
getting an instruction, you have to pay not only
for the aircraft rental, but for the time
of your instructor. Well, if you take an instrument
flight and you practice an approach and then you just
want to practice it a couple of times yourself, you
can actually go up without your instructor-- without
any view-limiting devices, of course-- where you can fully look
outside the airplane. And you can keep flying
that same approach. So you can actually
fly practice approaches without actually being in
an instrument condition or with view-limiting devices,
to just practice the mechanics of the whole thing. How you deal with
airspeed, who's going to start
talking to you next, what do you need to do next. And I find that
to be very useful. You'll also find on that-- you heard from
Sebastian yesterday about the MIT Flying Club. So there's an email list--
flying-pilots@mit.edu. So once you become a pilot,
it's great to be on that list because instrument-rated
pilots have to keep practicing their approaches. And so they need somebody
to sit next to them to look out the airplane
for other aircraft while they're wearing their
view-limiting devices. And that person is
called a safety pilot. So as long as you have
your private pilot license, even if you don't have
your instrument rating, you can serve as a safety pilot. So it's a great way-- and cheap way-- to
get a lot of practice in and see an
instrument pilot at work trying to do an approach. And you can sit there
and learn and look out. PHILIP GREENSPUN: And you get to
log that time as safety pilot, as if you had been flying. So it's a good way to
build up flying experience. TINA SRISVASTAVA: Yeah,
highly recommended. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Here's
a question for you guys. So the safety pilot--
you heard about the medical certification. Let's say the person
practicing the approach has a first class medical. So they're very
healthy and the FAA thinks the pilot is unlikely
to have a heart attack and keel over while under the hood. Does the safety pilot need
to have a current medical to serve as safety pilot? What do you guys think? AUDIENCE: Yes. PHILIP GREENSPUN:
It's ridiculous. That person has a heart
attack, the regular pilot can just take off
the hood and fly. The safety pilot shouldn't
need a medical, right? As long as their last words
are, you have the controls. But in fact, the safety pilot
is a required crew member for that operation. So the Feds say that he or she
must have a current medical. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
And just that joke that Philip said about--
you have the controls. I'll just take a
moment to explain what he's talking about. When you hand over control,
you take the controls, it's important to have what's
called a positive exchange of controls. So if I'm flying
the airplane and I'm giving the controls to Philip,
I'll say, you have controls. PHILIP GREENSPUN: I
have the controls. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
You have controls. So that reconfirming--
make sure that you know who's flying
the airplane so that you don't
result in a situation where no one's flying. Yes. AUDIENCE: When do
your hands come off the controls in that exchange? TINA SRISVASTAVA:
I usually keep them on up until I really know
that he knows what he's doing. So I actually keep
it on a little bit longer to make sure he knows
and he doesn't start turning in some other direction. PHILIP GREENSPUN: I
think on that third one. TINA SRISVASTAVA: The
final, "You have controls." PHILIP GREENSPUN: Especially
important in a helicopter. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
That's when you let go. PHILIP GREENSPUN: The
good thing about airplanes is you can take your hands off
and the airplane just keeps doing whatever it was doing. But the helicopter is
inherently unstable. So yeah, it's important that
you don't take your hands off until you hear that
third acknowledgment. TINA SRISVASTAVA: Yes. AUDIENCE: How long does
a cross-country trip take, from here to California? TINA SRISVASTAVA:
So the question was how long does it take to
fly from here to California? The answer really depends
on which type of aircraft you're flying. So a little Cessna 172
would take a long time, because it basically is
twice as fast as a car. And it's as the crow flies. But if you're flying
a fancy CIRRUS, you can get much faster. PHILIP GREENSPUN: You get a
headwind going west, generally. So it's probably going
to take about 15 hours to get to California,
maybe a little over 20 in a Cessna or a Piper. And then you'll get a little
speed boost on the way back. There are various companies
that offer 10 day instrument ratings. And they fly around a lot. So a couple of weeks to
get to California and back is reasonably comfortable
while doing flight training along the way. TINA SRISVASTAVA: One of
the biggest things that'll slow you down is not how
fast your plane can fly, but also your own
fatigue, which we'll talk about in human factors. All right are there
any more questions on instrument
flight or instrument meteorological conditions? Yes. AUDIENCE: What's your
opinion on the steam gauge versus the glass
cockpit for [INAUDIBLE]?? TINA SRISVASTAVA:
So the question was what's our opinion on steam
gauge versus a glass cockpit? I think we know
Philip's opinion here. I've actually flown both. I think that with the G1000,
or glass cockpit, what's nice is you can load the
approach and it'll actually show the full flight
plan that you're supposed to fly for a given approach. And you can actually
have a whole flight plan where you have multiple
approaches, one after the other. And it puts it up there
and it makes it very easy. But I will say
that to learn it-- I've actually done
instrument training on both the steam gauge
and the glass cockpit. And I think that steam
gauge obviously keeps you on your toes a lot more. You really know
what's happening. You're using your
heading bug to do a lot more, because
you can't enter some of these things in advance. And so I think
it's really helpful to learn how to do that, just
like I think, for example, your autopilot is amazing. You should have an
autopilot if you're going to fly across the country. But you shouldn't
use your autopilot when you're doing
flight training, because the first thing
Mark Nathanson, the FAA examiner will do, will be,
oh, look, your autopilot died. Now you have to learn
how to fly without it. So I think for flight
training, I recommend both. The other reason I continue to
fly both steam gauge and G1000 is that I fly with a
lot of other friends. So we talked about
the MIT Flying Club, you fly with your peers. There's also a group
of women pilots-- we call ourselves The Women
Pilots of New England. We basically bumped
into each other in the parking lots of
airports and now get together. We're actually having a
dinner tonight at 6:00 PM, so if any women pilots
want to join, please do. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Or pilots
who identify as women. TINA SRISVASTAVA: Sure. And these groups that you
fly with on these fly-outs, it's often the
case that you want to have two pilots flying
in a given airplane. And one flies there. And one's PIC there and
one's PIC on the way back. And so if you have
a lot of friends that fly the steam gauges,
which are cheaper to rent, you want to make sure you're
current in that airplane if you want to fly with them. And if you fly a G1000, you
want to make sure your friends that you fly with
also fly G1000s. So I fly both, because I
have friends that fly both. And we want to make sure
that we can fly together on these fly-outs. PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah, so
despite the fact that I usually fly glass cockpit aircraft, I
do fly instrument approaches in R44 helicopter
instrument trainers. And those are more challenging,
because there's no autopilot. And the machine is
inherently much less stable than the airplane. So that's steam gauges. So I wouldn't say
there's a big difference. Really, the world of
instrument flying-- if you transfer your skills
from the visual flying world to the instrument world--
and they do transfer very well. When you're flying visually,
you're spending about 80%, 90% of your time looking out the
window at the natural horizon. When you transfer
that to instrument, you're spending 80%
or 90% of your time looking at the artificial
horizon, or attitude indicator. And if you hold a
constant attitude, the rest of the instruments
take care of themselves. The experienced
instrument instructors will often cover up all five
of the other instruments, which gets a little harder
from the glass cockpit-- a lot of Post-Its. And have the IFR student try
to hold the constant attitude as best they can. And then remove the Post-Its
after, say, two minutes. And you'll find that you've only
gained a couple hundred feet and you've only lost maybe
10 degrees of heading. The FAA has terrible
advice about how to be an instrument pilot. They say scan the six-pack. So spend, essentially,
one sixth of the time. You used to spend 90% of your
time looking at the attitude indicator? Now, let's spend
1/6 of your time. Or spend half of your time--
look at the attitude indicator, look at these other things. But if you actually study
high-time instrument pilots or jet pilots, you'll
find that they're really focusing on the attitude
indicator 80%, 90% of the time, like I said. And if they don't do that-- I actually once flew with a guy. He was an MIT grad-- he was an MIT PhD. The FAA told him to scan
like this, so he does. And that airplane
was all over the sky, but he was constantly
recorrecting it. And he was right within
the ACS standards of about plus or
minus 100 feet and-- I don't know, maybe it's
10 degrees of heading. But we were in actual
conditions a Piper Arrow with pretty limited
backup facilities. So that was truly terrifying,
because he's somebody actually doing what the FAA says to do. The other thing
about glass cockpits that I do like is
it's great for night flying, because the
illumination is very uniform. So one problem with steam
gauges is that, at night, some of the instruments
can be dimmer or brighter than the others. I actually had a
Diamond Star, a DA40-- and the attitude indicator-- which is the thing that
you want to be using-- was the dimmest
instrument in the panel. And that was very annoying. They were back-lit--
the instruments themselves had the
lights in there. So there was really
no way to adjust it. I think you're going to find
that glass panel is what's in almost every aircraft
within five or 10 years, because it's just getting
too expensive to maintain these mechanical gyros. If you send out a mechanical
attitude indicator to be overhauled, that's $2,000. And the glass
cockpit replacement might only be $3,000 or $4,000. And you'll never have
to touch it again. TINA SRISVASTAVA:
When we polled earlier in terms of people who've
gone flying before-- so I'm going to
ask three things. Did you fly in a
steam gauge airplane? Did you find in a
G1000, or glass cockpit? Or have you flown in both? So, steam gauge. About half of you. And then G1000,
or glass cockpit. Oh, only two or three. And then if you've done both. Only a handful. So actually, it looks like the-- well, and of course,
there are a bunch of you that haven't flown at all. But the ones that have,
it looks like primarily in the steam gauges. So that's good to know. AUDIENCE: 30 years ago,
they hadn't been invented. TINA SRISVASTAVA: 30 years
ago, they hadn't been invented. All right, that's true. Well, this was great. And Philip talked a little
bit about night flying. We're going to have a
whole section on night flying tomorrow. But now we're going to
do a break for lunch. We'll give you about
45 minutes to get food. Please come back a little
bit before the hour and we'll get started right at 1 o'clock. Thanks.
