Crashing via autopilot?

[3WE]

ILS

Indeed, glide slope receivers and needles were often lacking…

…and even when things were present, who said they were working right!

P.S. Don’t tell Evan.

[flyboy2548m]

I watched a couple of her remaining videos, and what struck me was not her "lack of knowledge", but that I felt like her heart was never in any of this. She did not seem to especially like neither that airplane, nor flying in general.

Believe it or not, I agree with you.

Also, he seems to be focusing on the wrong issues. For example in this video, the main point she is making is that she accidentally turned off her Garmin and didn't know how to turn it back on. Surely, that's not great, but what about her inability to hold a heading or altitude or her total lack of positional awareness? That's much worse and I am not sure she even realized that this was an issue, or happening at all.

I mean...I have seen people who weren't terribly good pilots, but I don't think I have seen very many who didn't seem to want to be pilots in the first place. I feel like someone gave her this whole airplane idea and she went with it, but there was never any real commitment. It was clearly not her thing.

[ocelot]

PS: HSIs are fancy things that Gabriel and I didn’t have in our cheap ass training planes…right up there with dual VOR thingies.

I think you both misunderstood

I first learned not even on MSFS but on the C-64 version of Flight Simulator II. Which did have two VOR receivers but that was it. Out the window, all you got was solid green, and between the low resolution and terrible framerate even if there was something in sight you couldn't do much with it. (And while there was a scrolling overhead map, it took long enough to load that you didn't switch to it unless you absolutely had to, plus it mostly didn't show anything but the solid green ground anyway.) So, only way to know where you are is to tune the radios and twiddle the OBS headings.

Enough of that and I learned to visualize the horizontal situation without digging the chart out.

[Gabriel]

I think you both misunderstood

I first learned not even on MSFS but on the C-64 version of Flight Simulator II. Which did have two VOR receivers but that was it.

Are you kidding? There were 2 VORs, both of them with DME, one of them was also ILS, you had the OMI markers indicators, and you could change the VOR2 for an ADF. That is 1 full VOR and 1 full DME more than my best Tomahawk had.

[EDIT: I stand corrected, only the VOR1 had DME]

Out the window, all you got was solid green, and between the low resolution and terrible framerate even if there was something in sight you couldn't do much with it. (And while there was a scrolling overhead map, it took long enough to load that you didn't switch to it unless you absolutely had to, plus it mostly didn't show anything but the solid green ground anyway.) So, only way to know where you are is to tune the radios and twiddle the OBS headings.

Cross countries were terrible. In some cities (like Chicago, San Francisco and New York) you have enough ugly visual cues to more or less tell where you were.

Enough of that and I learned to visualize the horizontal situation without digging the chart out.

I'd say I had a very good horizontal situation awareness too. But that day I made a mistake. One that could have been fatal (except that it was in a sim).
And, even if you had a perfect situational awareness 100% of the time 100% of the times, I don't know how you fly an instrument approach procedure without a chart unless you know the approach by heart.

[Gabriel]

[Not_Karl]

Speed reading seems unreliable. The pilot should relentlessly pull-up.

[3WE]

I'd say I had a very good horizontal situation awareness too. But that day I made a mistake.

Misunderstandings:

I just wanted to point out that not_all light planes have HSI's (No idea of TN Fly Girl had one.) They are a bit more intuitive than the basic VOR needle.

And then Gabriel misunderstood me on "What's a DME".

Gabriel's summary statement is a good one.

Old-style instruments are a bit cryptic and require good situational awareness.

And a LOT of good pilots with good situational awareness complete flights with basic instruments.

But every now and then, a human can mix up left or right (or maybe even a flap lever vs. a prop lever.)

Gabe's done it, I've done it, and I watched a dude on Buffalo airways do it on a real DC-3.

And no question- "toy" simulators are great for lessons about this stuff. (I think [not_italics]we all started on FS for Commodore 64, and you could learn basic navigation. I even think I had an ADF option...maybe.

Now, all of that being said, for TN fly Girl to confuse left vs right in severe VMC weather- in fact, flying all over creation instead of even pointing ROUGHLY in the right direction AND THEN dicking with the autopilot... What did her instructors and check pilots see and not_see?

Our discussion is how, in-the-soup, left, right, up, down and banked get a bit...umm hazy.

And of course, we have her not being particularly good at keeping up and down straight, either.

I did see a talking-head youtube, say that they supposedly have recovered "film" from a Go-Pro or two. I dont't need to see it, but hopefully we will know if she truly was sitting there wondering why the plane was diving, pushing buttons and and not_enjoying the ride, or if something broke or if there was a health issue.

[ocelot]

(I think [not_italics]we all started on FS for Commodore 64, and you could learn basic navigation. I even think I had an ADF option...maybe.

As already mentioned (and as the screenshot above shows)... it did.


Anyway, all I was trying to say originally is that I can't imagine making that particular mistake (turning the wrong way under those circumstances) because where things are spatially is fundamental to my situational awareness.

Now, losing situational awareness entirely and then doing wrong things, or hearing "left" from ATC and turning right, and other stuff like that, sure...

[ocelot]

Oh, and you fly an instrument approach without a chart by not caring what the exact procedure is (because it's FSII on a C64) and finding the localizer frequency by twiddling the radio knobs (since in FSII on a C64 there are only a handful of stations to tune in and you can tell from the DME which is the right one) and remembering which runway it's the localizer for (since in FSII on a C64 there's only one per airport) so you aren't accidentally flying the back course.

Not recommended in the real world, or even in later MSFS, where there are too many localizers to choose from.