Vance Harral

Yes on the last two, no on the first two. Modern equipment requires more skill and more education to be proficient than older equipment, and that's a new challenge that has everything to do with the equipment, and almost nothing to do with the person. Many folks understand this, and plan for the additional training and practice required to reap the benefit. But many do not, and are surprised to find out (or be told) they are actually worse off with new tech than without it, despite having entirely reasonable attitudes about training and proficiency. Not all of them respond to that cognitive dissonance the way we wish they would. I suspect we're not very far apart in our opinions about modern avionics. With sufficient practice and training, they can definitely enhance safety for a particular pilot. But there simply isn't any evidence they're making flying safer for the GA population as a whole. Anecdotally, I don't see it when I give flight instruction to dozens of clients. Statistically, it's just not there in the accident/violation data. When I rant about this stuff, I'm really trying to figure out how we change that. All I know for sure is that just having the gizmos in the panel isn't enough by itself, even though most of my clients have pretty good attitudes. Something is missing.

If you're referring to my posts, I'm not arguing that modern technology is making pilots worse, only that it's not moving the needle one way or the other when you look at the data. The VFR-into-IMC accident rate isn't moving. Neither is the midair collision rate. I appreciate that @Marc_B took the time to type out a lot of details about the information and capability modern equipment provides. But he doesn't give evidence that the accident rate is getting better, he only gives theories about how those technologies could theoretically prevent accidents. It's a sales job, not evidence. To cherry-pick a few things from his post: ... then why didn't the pilot who is the subject of this thread just do that? Instead, he said, "I'm having trouble controlling the plane and doing stuff at the same time", and that his "main GPS" (assuming it was the panel mount unit) "was totally wrong" I know it's de rigueur to just say he was an idiot, but the reality seems to be that it's not as easy as you posit, across the pilot population as a whole. That statement doesn't apply to Marc as an individual, of course, but he's just one data point. ... provided you (1) haven't accidentally (or deliberately) turned them off with a declutter operation; and (2) fully understand how the technology that transmits the data can fail to complete transmissions. Mooneyspace pilots are surely a cut above average, and absolutely no one here is more qualified on their cockpit technology than @PT20J, so why was this an issue: https://mooneyspace.com/topic/43573-missing-ads-b-tfrs/ Whatever the case, pilots are still flying into TFRs on a regular basis, even as the fleet is better and better equipped to depict where they are and warn you when you're approaching them. The incursion rate today isn't any better than it was 20 years ago. It's great technology, but the question is why some pilots are unable to use that button, in the "heat of battle", so to speak. I incorporate the LVL button into flight training, in aircraft so-equipped. In the last couple of flight reviews I gave in thusly-equipped airplanes, the pilots couldn't really tell me when/how they expected to use the button, just that it was there "in case they needed it". So I put them in unusual attitudes, and they performed the FAA-standard recovery by hand (poorly). When I asked them, "Why didn't you just press the LVL button on the autopilot?", they basically said it didn't occur to them. If you think they'd behave more rationally in the fear and stress of an actual disorientation event, you're dreaming. To beat a dead horse... Equipment is just equipment. It's not safety by itself. To convince me that a technology actually improves safety, or reduces legal violations, or whatever... you have to show data. Yes, the accident data is sometimes difficult to find and/or interpret. But between not seeing any meaningful change in the accidents and violations covered in my Flight Instructor Refresher Courses, and my actual experience teaching as a flight instructor, I'm confident the last 20 years of technology isn't delivering on the promises its advocates make for it. That doesn't make the technology itself bad. It may indeed deliver on promises in the future, as education and training behavior changes. But we're not there yet. And it's specifically true that lots of pilots dumping AMUs on "safety" in their avionics upgrades are actually achieving nothing of the sort. Perhaps, like we say, "Pitch plus power equals performance", we should all start saying, "Equipment plus training equals safety". As I mentioned above, the irony of this is that you need more hours of training to actually improve your odds with modern technology. Finally, a punch line... the last person I gave the LVL test to quit flying with me after that flight, which also included an instrument approach that he never actually loaded into the navigator. I firmly but politely told him not to use the privileges of his instrument rating until he got additional training. He didn't like that, and also insinuated he didn't think I was worth the $65/hour I was charging him, to train with the $50K panel he'd just put in his PA-28. A few days later, he departed Colorado after dark, and flew through the night all the way to Arizona, over pitch black mountainous terrain, undoubtedly confident in the safety of his high-end panel. It turned out OK for him - that time - but my signature is in his logbook a couple of times, and I can't take it back. Maybe that story helps all of you understand why I'm so wound up about this stuff.

Well, then, what's the point of it? Yes, statistics are complicated, and I also understand the theory of risk homeostasis. I'm not a Luddite, and I've enjoyed every technology advance in aviation during my flying avocation/career, largely because they sit at the intersection of my airplane addiction and my nerdy electronics bent. I just haven't seen compelling evidence that we're particularly safer for it. Maybe we are indeed more capable. It's possible a lot more IFR missions are being completed in single engine pistons that used to be, and that's a good enough reason to like the new hotness. This is the crux of my point. There are some pilots who I'd trust in IMC equipped with nothing more than vacuum gyros and two NAV/COMs, because they frequently practice for the relatively straightforward failure modes of that equipment. There are others I wouldn't trust with two WAAS GPSes and four sources of attitude information (not an uncommon configuration these days), because they've never trained for anything other than nominal, simple scenarios. The irony is that folks in the latter category aren't necessarily training fewer hours than the former, there's just so much more to cover. Occasionally the latter group will deride the former for being "too cheap for aviation", though that's kind of a bogeyman argument that's actually pretty rare. What I find more common is clients who are very excited about the safety aspects of their recent $25/50/75K panel upgrade, but who demonstrate to me in a flight review that they don't know how to use it in anything other than a small number of scenarios. That's not a recipe for safety, but a lot of them truly believe they've "put their money where their mouth is", with respect to being safe.

OK, I'll play. Give us your argument. Many people want to believe your assertion is true, and tell themselves so as they shell out tons of dollars on "capability" (but disturbingly little on "training"). But overall GA IMC accident data just doesn't show a meaningful decline, despite the fact that on average the GA fleet grows more sophisticated every year. Here's one article with data: https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/vfr-into-imc/ntsb. Yes, I know that if you draw a linear average, those graphs show a slight reduction in the accident rates over time. But viewed holistically, the rate is just bouncing around, same as it has done for decades. Indeed, two of the absolute worst years in the last couple of decades were 2017 and 2019, long after the introduction of the latest round of navigators and autopilots, and just before the Covid-induced proficiency lapses. So there just isn't any evidence of a great revolution in safety as all these gizmos get put in panels. Bottom line: equippage is just equippage. It's not capability or safety by itself. As others have noted, the more capability we have, the more practice and training is required to truly benefit from that capability, and most of us just don't get all the bases covered. I'm not so arrogant as to think I'm special in this respect. Proficiency with buttonology in the multitude of airplanes I'm asked to give instruction in is one of my biggest concerns. Presently, I'm expected to be proficient with all of GNS, GTN (Xi and non-Xi), and Avidyne navigators; vacuum gyros, G5s, GI-275s, G500 Txi, and G3x Touch. I won't actually take an Avidyne or GI-275 equipped airplane into IMC, but that's not because those aren't highly capable devices, it's just because I just don't get enough time with them to be instrument proficient. If someone asks me for instrument instruction in a Dynon-equipped airplane, ethics will demand I decline. Which is a bummer, because those are cool toys. But as Harry Callahan said, a man's got to know his limitations.

Excellent point from Don, and this can be done in any Mooney, including those without speed brakes. It can be done in any airplane at all, provided you understand the time and distance it takes. I always cringe a little when people say things like, "You can go down or slow down in a Mooney, but not both!". That's bunk. Pitch plus power always equals performance, it just takes longer to stabilize at a particular point in a less draggy airframe. That said, it's certainly reasonable for any particular pilot to say the challenge/risk of of a constant slope variable airspeed approach isn't worth the benefit, especially if it takes a few miles to reach the new set point. Mostly it's a matter of how much you've practiced it. We all have limited time and dollars to practice, and simple isn't bad.

Aside from using slightly taller/longer tugs and tow bars without hitting the prop in the vertical position, I can't think of much. It certainly doesn't make any operational difference in what runway surface you could/would accept. I think the, "Be careful, a Mooney doesn't have much prop clearance" thing is overblown. A PA-28-161 has an advertised minimum prop clearance of 8.25", and an A36 is 7.25". An SR-22 clocks in at 7" even. And those airplanes are a lot more likely to reach their minimum clearance than a Mooney, due to them having a conventional oil/air nose strut vs. the Mooney's shock disk design. All these airplanes are more likely to drag their prop through the dirt pulling off the runway into the grass at KOSH than a Cessna 170, of course, but it's not like the Mooney is particularly special.

Yep, we're clearly brothers-from-another-mother. I lament that you moved away from Denver before I got a chance to fly with you, maybe we can still do that some day. Agreed. But some of the challenge there - at least for me - is just the nature of IFR training in dense, fair-weather metro areas like Denver. Curious about your perspective, especially since you used to fly here. Most of my IFR instructional flights don't involve filing and flying an IFR flight plan, due to efficiency challenges. Of course you can and should file during training, including XC travel. But it's rarely required to file IFR around here, due to the lack of flyable IMC; and of course not everyone has 6+ hour chunks available for training (including myself). So the options are to file and fly locally in CAVU conditions and accept a lot of not-always-useful wide vectoring around a zillion VFR threats; or to stay VFR and request "practice approaches", accepting that doing so largely just makes you another VFR flight following customer in ATC's eyes. Both of these things change the controller dynamic, and - despite my assertions to the contrary above - can make the controllers assigned to the bugsmasher-laden low-altitude airspace somewhat grumpier. They know you're just training, that it's not "for real" IFR, and that subtly changes attitudes and expectations. It's a completely different story in real IMC - those guys will bend over backward for you. But again, we just don't get much of that. I don't mean to overplay that challenge. The vast majority of experiences I've had with Denver TRACON are great, including having students ask for delaying vectors on training flights. But I try not to abuse the privilege on CAVU days, because again, we're all on the same team. It's one thing to allow a student to ask for hand-holding on a peaceful winter evening when the frequency is quiet. Quite another to ask for it during the 9am airline push out of Denver International on a clear-and-a-million day.

Yes, off to the lower right, see attached. Makes it easier for new students to ignore this ancient piece of tech.

Not surprised you accomplished it quickly. But I don't think this sort of thing is really about how fast you can work. Rather, it's about the confidence to get the job done methodically, even if you're interrupted during the process to correct a small attitude deviation, backspace after a bump of turbulence causes you to hit the wrong key, etc. It's just not a crisis if it takes a full minute to load a new approach, or re-load the current approach with a different transition. A skill that's important in establishing that confidence, is having enough situational awareness to understand whether you're actually short on time and space. Assigning a new approach or transition when you're 30 seconds away from a no-longer-relevant fix is kind of a jerk move by the controller; but doing so when you're several minutes away is not. So what if it takes you a couple of minutes to bring up the new plate and re-load the approach? You've got that time. But you only know that if you have enough SA. It's hard to argue that SA is a Herculean task in the modern era of moving maps and geo-referenced approach plates, but you still have to be ahead of the airplane. On a related note, one of the things I teach my IFR students is the importance of this tool in the tool bag: XXX Approach, can I get a vector while I re-program my GPS? This is unlikely to piss off the controller, but even if it does, you're the PIC. And that vector request might help a new controller understand what's a reasonable expectation, though that's rare. Experienced controllers already know when they're giving you a late/high workload assignment, and will be unsurprised by the vector request. That's not to say you shouldn't bring your "A" game in a busy metropolitan area. But in the end, the person with their fingers on the GPS, and the folks in front of the scope, are all on the same team.

Thank you sir, that'd be much appreciated. I'll pay shipping costs. If you do find the cable, DM me for details.

Maybe, but there's already a separate NAV1/NAV2 selector for the DME. The DME itself is a KN-62. I can't find any mention of "station" in the KN-62x manuals, except for its ability to indicate "time to station".

It's important to distinguish between the quantity required for proper lubrication at any given instant, and the ability to maintain that minimum quantity over the course of a long flight. The quantity of oil necessary for proper lubrication (and cooling) is quite small. But the manufacturer of an airplane with long legs must publish recommendations based on completing a flight over the airplane's maximum range, with worst-normal-case oil consumption. I confess I don't fully understand the intersection of engine and airframe certification regulations in this respect. But in practice, the "minimum oil" you need to commence a flight depends on how long you expect to fly (with reserves, of course), and the rate at which your engine consumes oil. Like so many other things in aviation, this can be a complicated analysis, and it's up to the PIC to decide.

I'm a fellow ranter about this. I actually think the industry does instrument pilots a disservice, by evangelizing the idea that you must set up an approach "properly", in advance, so you never have to make last minute changes. Yep, I'm looking squarely at Gary Reeves and the cadre of other CFIIs with their never-program-VTF! screeds, and related advice. These folks set up an idea in the heads of their clients, that GPS approach programming is scary. That you get one shot at it, and you better get it done well in advance of commencing the approach. Any late-breaking change and you're screwed, because it's just not possible to fly the airplane and handle the button-ology. Bunk, I say. Even with the old etch-a-sketch interface on the GNS navigators, it's just not that hard. But like other aviation skills, it requires a lot of practice. Repeated reps of doing the same basic things with a few variations. Unlike other aviation skills, GPS programming can be practiced at home, in short increments, for free. So I just don't think there's any excuse for a modern IFR pilot operating on an instrument flight plan to be weakly or not-at-all proficient in loading a new approach on short notice.

I agree that the panel isn't factory original, so I suppose it's possible the "checklist indicator" is a one-off device. I'm flying the airplane again tomorrow and will - with the indulgence of my commercial student - fiddle with it some more. Speaking of the "STN" switch, we've yet to determine what that switch is connected to (if anything). The current guess is that STN means "station", but we're unsure what "station on" and "station off" might select/indicate.

Thanks for the pointer, Lance. I confess I was hoping someone had one to "donate", but 0.068 AMUs isn't a bad price for a hobby project. I appreciate your reply.

This is exactly what happened during my partner's flight. Trivial fix, but the strain relief idea is a good one that we didn't think of. I'll bring this up with our mechanic at the next inspection. Excellent idea, we'll give this a try and report back.

I'm resurrecting this thread to see if anyone else has a spare programming cable lying around. The flight school where I teach recently acquired a 172 with a KLN-90B, which appears to still work. The airplane is intended for VFR private pilot training, and in an iPad universe it really doesn't matter whether it ever even gets powered up. But I have a soft spot for vintage avionics, and thought it might be a humorous side quest to update it with a database from this decade. I've got a USB/serial adapter, and maybe a line on a recent database file, but I don't have the required DB9 to TRS jack cable. I could probably make one in a pinch, with some research, but it would be more convenient to just buy something.

On an anecdotal side-note about battery capacity... This weekend, one of my airplane partners had an alternator failure in our airplane - exactly the contingent situation being discussed here. This occurred in IMC, though fortunately he was only a few minutes from home, with a healthy battery and a dual G5 setup that has it's own backups. Anyway... we've done capacity checks on our battery using the "turn on the stuff in the airplane in the hangar" method, and being a bit of an electrical engineering nerd, I even know what the voltage vs. remaining capacity curve looks like for our Concorde RG-35A battery, driving an "emergency" electrical load. The interesting thing is that when the alternator failed - which my partner was alerted to immediately via the bus voltage annunciator - he observed an indicated battery voltage of 11.7V. That's abnormally low for a healthy battery, even taking into account the IR drop between the battery terminals and the voltage gauge. It's much lower than we ever saw on that gauge in our capacity test. Once he got on the ground and shut down, the indicated voltage immediately went back to 12.3. Voltage at the actual battery terminals was slightly higher, of course; but the point is that battery voltage with the engine running was lower than with it stopped. The cause of the failure turned out to be simple: just a broken field wire at the alternator. But his observations suggest that a spinning alternator with a broken field wire actually puts an additional electrical load on the battery, beyond the "turn on all the switches" load one might use in a practical capacity test. I can see how that might be the case, because the alternator output wire to which the battery is connected, would at that point also be connected to an un-energized rotating electro-magnetic system. I confess I haven't dug out my electromechanical machines textbooks to verify that idea, though. Anyone know if this is actually the case? If the hypothesis is correct, then in the event of electrical failure, it might be a good idea to pull the main alternator breaker (not the field breaker) to disconnect that parasitic load. That assumes you can pull the breaker, though. The main alternator breaker in our airplane is of a type that cannot be manually pulled, for whatever reason.

Good guess, but the first time it blinked at me was taxiing from the runup area to the hold short line for initial takeoff. This was after fiddling with it during the runup. The aircraft hadn't been powered up for more than about 10 minutes, so seems unlikely to be a simple timer.

Yeah, you've got the gist of how it works. I think you can choose to interpret the lit state as "done" or "not done" either way, but the manual for the thing probably has a suggestion for one way or the other. What I'm really interested in is what mechanism causes it to blink. Seems like the intent is to signal to you that you haven't completed the checklist; but I'm not sure what's causing it to decide that.

Not actually a Mooney question, this gizmo is in a recently acquired 172 at the flight school where I teach. But we have a lot of experienced aviators here, thought one of you might have seen one. As shown below, there is a charming, vintage checklist gizmo at the top of the radio stack in this airplane. Pushing the buttons causes them to light up, and pushing a lit button turns the light back off. Moving the switch from "take off" to "landing" seems to invert the state of the buttons: whatever is lit goes dark, and vice versa. That part is straightforward enough, but while checking out in the airplane this weekend, I discovered that the lights sometimes start blinking, for seemingly inexplicable reasons. I think they might be tied to a switch on the throttle. Like, maybe if you move from idle to non-idle or vice-versa, and you don't light up (or extinguish) the lights, it blinks to get your attention that you haven't completed the takeoff or landing checklist? Anyone know the make and model of this thing, maybe have a link to a manual? I think it would be funny to be the one guy at the school who is fully "checked out" (pun intended) on the operation of this thing.

We also bought an airplane with "hangar rash" on the ailerons, though after looking at it for years and years I came to the conclusion it was most likely the result of a ham-fisted attempt to rig them by bending the trailing edges with incorrect tools. Ours was along the inboard trailing edges, not out at the outboard tips like yours. Yours looks, frankly, worse. The skin of that port side aileron appears to be cracked, and would make me nervous. In our case, we flew the airplane that way for a long time. But things came to a head when we needed to replace an aileron control arm bracket due to wear. The bracket is fastened to the aileron leading edge with a conventional bolt and nut, but the nut is inside the aileron, and there is no way to get a wrench on it without partially de-skinning the aileron. We took the airplane to Beegles for that work. The guys at Beegles looked at our ailerons, said they weren't entirely sure they were legally airworthy in the shape they were in (while acknowledging the airplane had been flying for years that way and that it was matter of opinion), and recommended a full re-skin, which we did. We now have much nicer looking ailerons, though the paint doesn't match (in fairness to Beegles, our existing paint is awful, more than the usual challenge to match). The cost was a little spendy, but not earth shattering. I think it was $2-3K, but this was several years ago, so the exact amount we paid isn't really relevant to what you'd pay today. Based on our experience, I'm pretty confident the guys at Beegles would recommend a re-skin of your ailerons. That's not to say someone else might have a different idea, but I can't imagine what it would be. I've seen trailing edges of various surfaces repaired with patches, including - for better or worse - elevators and flaps. But never ailerons in my experience, and never in any case at the corner as is shown in your photos. If you do have the ailerons re-skinned, I'd advise replacing that control arm bracket as well. Again, they do wear after 40+ years, and there is no way to replace them without a partial de-skin.

A mechanic friend called me today, who I'll keep anonymous because he is a truly good guy and everyone makes mistakes. He was working with an apprentice to swing the gear of an M20J as part of an annual inspection. The apprentice was in the cockpit and working the "lawnmower pull start" mechanism in the J model that manually extends the gear. Well, there wasn't quite enough supervision, and the apprentice kept pulling on the line even after the gear down light illuminated, until it got really hard to move. My guess is the bungee springs on the main rods are bottomed out, and the truss rods are in an excessively over-center position, but I haven't actually seen the airplane. Anyway, my mechanic friend says the gear is now "bound up" and won't move in either direction. In particular, if the system is put back in a normal configuration (tab closed, which is supposed to disengage the emergency spline, then breaker in), selecting gear up with the switch doesn't do anything except trip the breaker for the gear motor. In my M20F, the emergency extension crank can be rotated CCW to move the gear toward the retracted position. Yes, I know the placard in the cockpit says not to turn it that direction, but the M20F service manual actually prescribes doing exactly that during certain rigging operations. So if this was an F model, turning the emergency extension crank CCW might be a way to alleviate the over-extended scenario. But my limited understanding of the "lawnmower pull start" system in the J model is that it's impossible to do this. I can't offer much help to my friend because I'm just not really familiar with the J model emergency extension system, and it's unclear to me what might have actually happened to get the gear bound up like this. Supposedly none of the rods appear to be bent, the system is just under a lot of pressure. It occurs to me that the emergency extension spline may no longer be dis-engaging properly, and that's what's actually causing the breaker to trip rather than pressure on the gear rods. But again, I haven't seen the airplane. Anyone know how to get the gear moving back in the other direction, or at least release the pressure/tension on the mechanism? My friend is contemplating removing some of the bolts that hold the rods in place, but that seems like a bad idea when the system is under pressure, as it might damage parts and/or hurt someone.

This is one of those interesting cases where newer isn't a slam dunk. GI275s have higher resolution, brighter displays, and features the G5 doesn't. But whether having more, brighter pixels makes up for the physically smaller size of the display depends to some degree on individual eye performance: focus, whether you need cheaters, etc. Some people prefer the physically larger square displays over the higher resolution round ones. So make sure you go actually sit in airplanes with each flavor, before deciding. You can't really tell how it will affect you personally just from pictures. You only have to cut the panel for G5s if you want to flush mount them, and that's not a requirement, though you might have to file the hole slightly out of round to get a pair of them to sit one above the other (we did). But they stick out from the panel quite prodigiously if you don't flush mount - about 3/4". You don't really notice this sitting right in front of them, but it looks ugly from the side. If you're a flight instructor in the right seat, non-flush-mounted G5s also tend to obscure the tip of the steam gauge ASI needle when it's in the most interesting part of the range; and if you install only a G5 ADI and keep your steam gauge DG/HSI, the non-flush mount tends to obscure the top of the DG/HSI, which is of course almost the only thing you care about. Note that the airspeed and altitude tapes on the G5 are not certified primary, and thus are for "situational awareness only", the 275 is superior in this respect. But when I point this out with my flight instructor hat on, response from the pilot in the left seat is nearly always, "Yeah, whatever..." I know most of them are completely ignoring the steam gauge ASI/ALT, and it is what it is. When it comes to battery life, things get really curious. Garmin advertises 4 hours for the G5, but only 1 hour for the 275. 1 hour is "plenty" by a lot of people's standards, but if you're just comparing runtime, the G5 is the clear winner. My guess is that high-end display eats a lot of electrons. Here's a subtle point that's not obvious: the operational knob for the G5 is in the lower right-hand corner of the instrument, while the GI-275 is at lower left. In a "classic" Mooney 6-pack panel, the yoke shaft exits the panel right next to the 4 o'clock position of the lower center hole, which means the knob for a G5 HSI winds up right next to the yoke shaft, and that's an annoyance for us. Whether a lower-left or lower-right knob is better varies from airplane to airplane. Something to think about. Both devices are wonderful instruments and you can't go wrong with either. But as I said, not really a slam dunk to choose the newer GI-275, given the cost difference and the subtleties mentioned above.

The biggest issue with Cologuard is financial, at least if you use insurance for healthcare. Cologuard has a high false positive rate, about 13%. If your Cologuard test turns up positive, they send you for an actual colonoscopy, which often indicates there is nothing actually wrong. The problem is that at that point, your colonoscopy is no longer a "routine screening" that's covered at 100% by law. Instead, your insurer gets to decide how it's handled, and you typically pay your co-pay or deductible or whatever. That can run into the thousands if you're on a high deductible plan, see https://www.gastroconsa.com/how-cologuard-tests-may-end-up-costing-you-thousands/ I'm sure the people who developed Cologuard and the docs that suggest it mean well. It's a way to screen a percentage of the population too squeamish for the gold standard practice. But because of the way insurance works, it effectively looks like a big financial scam. Just go get the colonoscopy.