Aero-Tips!

A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of "there are no old, bold pilots.")

Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner, master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us -- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators. Some of them, you may have heard before... but for each of us, there will also be something we might never have considered before, or something that didn't "stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized it for the practical test.

Look for our daily Aero-Tips segments, coming each day to you through the Aero-News Network.

Aero-Tips 12.07.06

I was teaching late-model Bonanzas and Barons at FlightSafety International when the first computerized panel-mounted devices started to appear in high-end personal airplanes. I remember one client who had the first StormScope™ that had the capability of storing a few short checklist steps for display (bypassing a sometimes bulky printed checklist). During a class break he asked me which checklist I thought he should put on this device. I thought a second and then quipped, "How about the total electrical failure checklist?"

I was joking, of course, because the StormScope™ wouldn't be operative to display this checklist if it was needed.

Afterward I asked my student what he thought makes the most sense for him, and he eventually programmed in an abbreviated (storage space was limited then) version of the Before Takeoff checklist -- there were a lot of steps, it was not a time-critical flight operation so he'd have time to punch the little buttons and read the small, green font, and using the panel-mount helped him keep his eyes up on the gauges and outside the airplane instead of looking down in his lap between actions.

Shoot forward 15 years, and I'm in the right seat of a Technologically Advanced Aircraft (TAA). Whole banks of checklists are available on the airplane's multifunction display (MFD) screen; the pilot I was flying with is extremely familiar with the device and likes the big, high-visibility font that puts that old green screen to same.

At the end of our flight he offered to show me something he called funny -- the first step of the factory-installed Shutdown checklist displayed on the MFD, is "Avionics master...OFF".

Of course this step turns off the panel -- including the MFD, and the remainder of the checklist.

I think overall that increases in cockpit technology hold the promise of greatly reducing pilot workload, and consequently increasing safety. When using cockpit technology for any purpose, though, think about how you'll really use it, and look for pitfalls or traps that might make it less useful to you and even impair your actions if you don't have a back-up procedure in place.

Aero-tip of the day: Think about what you'll do, and how you'll do it, before you're in the cockpit without time to think.

FMI: Aero-Tips