Vance Harral

The usual "not realistic" complaint about ATC stuff is from people who say they're never going to fly anywhere "busy". No Class B or C, and only the sleepiest of towered airports. It is indeed true that you're unlikely to get that kind of stuff flying from, say, Platte Valley, CO to Sidney, NE; but I don't care. Still good to practice button-ology under stress anyway.

It mostly seems to boil down to experience, as experience tends to mitigate the adrenaline rush when presented with an even slightly abnormal situation. Pilots with lots of hours seem to do better, pilots with fewer hours get more flustered. My guess is that less experienced pilots are more overwhelmed with the idea of switching to "Plan B", particularly when it involves telling ATC (real or simulated) they need special accommodations to get re-situated. Note that "experience" doesn't necessarily mean piloting experience. There can be positive transfer from other jobs that involve managing complex systems: anesthesiologist, power plant operator, fireman, etc. Having said that, it certainly it helps to be a engineering nerd type (like me). Ideally the client has studied the the block diagram of their avionics installation - there's a good article advocating for this at https://www.ifr-magazine.com/avionics/avionics-systems-issues/. But even if they haven't, nerd types almost immediately "get it" when I say something like, "the magnetometer that senses heading information is in your wing, and there's a long communications wire that runs from it to your HSI. It snakes through a lot of twists and turns in the wing and fuselage, maybe it came unsecured and then got cut". Folks without this background just know there's a "computer" driving the TV screen in front of them, and tend to assume its a single, integrated thing; and that if one piece of information it displays starts acting up, that the whole thing might be unreliable. That's what I'm trying to accomplish. I fail things I think the client might be overly dependent on. If that causes a conflagration, we make a plan to learn not to rely so much on that particular device. Or, if they simply can't live without it, I point out they really need to buy a second iPad/install a second GTN650/etc. That would be the holy grail, but it's a very tall order in the modern era. As you point out, AATD panels are highly customizable, but also very expensive, so the local flight school that has an AATD typically has just a couple of panel variations, that only match (maybe) their own airplanes. Garmin is on the right track with their latest PC-based avionics simulator, which allows you to build and simulate a custom avionics cockpit model, see https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=12373. But that system only simulates Garmin products, of course, and only the later/higher end ones at that (no option for GNS navigators, no G5/GI-275). It's also not a flight simulator, just an avionics systems simulator. And it doesn't have any capacity for simulating failures. This challenge gets somewhat back into my rant in the other thread, about "new" avionics. There were multiple, competing suppliers of NAV/COMs fifty years ago, but there was effectively a universal standard interface to them: VHF frequencies and OBS bearings. Training in one airplane or simulator was highly transferable to another. That's no longer true today. People started talking about this in the G1000 era, but it's only gotten worse. Knowing your way around a G1000 is only slightly helpful if you sit down in front of a G500/G3X/GTN setup. You're in better shape to fly behind a G3X/G3XTouch if you've flown with G5s/GI-275s, but you should still plan on hours and hours of training (not necessarily involving actual flight in the airplane) to get up to speed. And all that Garmin experience is almost completely useless in an Avidyne or Dynon-equipped platform. You might not think this is a big deal at first, if you only fly one airplane. But when you get together with your buddies at the airport pancake breakfast - or here on Mooneyspace - you can't necessarily help each other out with question about panels and procedures because you don't have the same stuff. Worst of all, even when you think you have the same stuff, a true nerd like me will come along and point out that you're not both running the same firmware version in your gizmo, and therefore will see slightly different behavior than your buddy. If I were pie-in-the-sky daydreaming, I might put together an open source project, and try to convince all the avionics manufacturers to interface their training simulators into that project, which in turn would interface to Xplane and/or Pepar3D and/or Redbird. It sure would be nice. But that's a tough enough engineering challenge, and that's the easy part. Convincing the manufacturers to participate would require an exceptionally skilled businessman/politician.

Sounds like @CVOhas already tried the simple stuff. But for what it's worth, I've found anecdotally that "popping" in an ANR headset is sometimes caused by simple things that break the integrity of the ear cup seal. e.g. vibration on ground roll or in turbulence that makes the headset move around on your head; turning your head; wearing glasses; and in some cases just one's head/ear anatomy not being a good match for the seals. I rarely get this popping in my Gen 1 Lightspeed Zulus, but when I do, the first thing I try is just using my hands to press the ear cups a little more tightly to my head. If the popping goes away, then I start thinking about whether the size adjustment mechanism slipped, the ear seals popped off their mounts, I'm wearing thick-earpiece spectacles, or whatever. It's my understanding there is an implicit assumption in noise cancelling control loops, that the in-the-ear-cup environment is mostly isolated from the outside environment. If that assumption is violated, the control system temporarily overdrives the speaker that is supposed to be producing "anti noise". That can definitely cause popping. To be clear, not suggesting anyone should have to fly around with their hands on their noggin, clamping their headset even more tightly to their head. Just saying it's a simple thing to try first.

In the realm of "advanced avionics", I practice a couple of philosophies with instrument students/clients. It's not a list of specific tasks, but rather a set of concepts that go like this: 1) If a client demonstrates any reasonable degree of basic instrument proficiency, then I'm allowed to fail anything I want, at any time, provided I can do so safely and legally in simulated conditions. I make no argument that said failures are "realistic", because that's not really the point. What I'm trying to do is build systems knowledge (in some cases my own as well as the client's!); and to build general strength and confidence when things stop operating as expected. For example, I'm aware that a simultaneous power-down of two G5s/GI-275s at the same time is unlikely, but I don't care - I'll fail 'em simultaneously anyway to see how the client responds. Do they make good use of the AV-20 they installed "just in case"? Do they use Foreflight to display attitude from a Stratux/Stratus/Sentry on their iPad? Do they revert to needle/ball/airspeed? Any of those are reasonable. What I don't want to see is them saying they'd troubleshoot why the G5s are dead while hand-flying in IMC, and/or complaining that "this would never happen in real life". Similarly, I'll pull a GAD29 breaker such that the navigator can't talk to the ADI/HSI, even though it's very unlikely that device would fail by itself. I want to see if the client recognizes they don't have lateral/vertical indicators (or if they actually still do, it turns out this depends on how the devices are wired and whether it's a GPS vs. ground-based approach), and what they do about it. And of course I fail individual ADIs/HSIs, autopilots, and the primary GNS/GTN/IFD navigator. 2) I'm allowed to ask for any kind of navigation procedures I want, regardless of how likely it is one would have to use them in real life; particularly if I've failed other nav equipment per (1) above. VOR approach? Yes. VOR/DME if you have DME installed? Yep. ADF approach? If you've got a working one and we can find an approach, then yes. Steering the ownship icon back and forth across the course line on a geo-referenced approach plate in Foreflight? Absolutely I'll do this, if the client has said or even hinted they'd do so in an emergency. The point of this is not to convince the client to maintain proficiency with "old" or "alternative" equipment. It's to put them in an uncomfortable situation, and in a lot cases, force them to realize that their backup nav solution isn't actually viable, because they don't really know how to use it. This sometimes leads to a post-flight learning along the lines of, "If my XXX gizmo fails, I will declare an emergency and seek VMC conditions"; rather than "I will attempt to use my backup nav solution to fly an approach". 3) I'm allowed to throw any simulated ATC curveball I want during instrument procedures, regardless of how realistic it is. Unexpected hold? Yep. Last minute change in which approach to fly? Yep. Slam dunk approach from above the glideslope? I'm your huckleberry. Request to "keep your speed up"? I'll do so with my best faux east coast accent. If you request vectors to final, I'll tell you to expect it, then clear you to an IAF or IF instead. If you load the full procedure from an IAF, I'll be sure to vector you onto final instead. You're probably getting the theme here. I don't particularly care how "realistic" any of this is, I'm just trying to force the client to work harder, faster, and - in most cases - realize the stress level of doing so is dramatically influenced by how good they are with button-ology. It's a powerful motivator to get them to work with a nav trainer on the ground to get better. That's my take on it, but I'm likely one of the lesser experienced CFIIs here on the forum. Looking forward to what others have to say.

Advance apologies... I'm triggered. As a denizen of an airport where last call has come in vogue, let me opine... it's dumb. This idea that you are "letting people know you won't be calling or listening to the frequency any more" is dumb. What are the other aircraft who are still on frequency actually supposed to do with that information? The biggest irony around here is that it's sometimes not even the last call made on frequency by the aircraft in question - the pilot kiddos using it change their mind, and make another call, often accompanied by a second last call. To date, I've managed to avoid keying up and asking if it's their real last call, or their next-to-last call... but I say it in my head, and sometimes to my students. It's not so much the call itself I mind, as the lack of awareness about its use. I lump it in with other, useless "callouts". Let's be honest - a lot of this stuff gets said because it sounds cool, and makes you feel like a big boy pilot. Perhaps it seems "standard", and maybe - if you haven't actually thought it through - it seems "safe"... but the safety purpose of CTAF calls is to provide immediate, actionable information to other aircraft on frequency. I'm increasingly frustrated that pilots around my neck of the woods - those from the nearby flight school airport in particular - are instead using it as a way to verbalize a checklist for everything they're going to do in the next five minutes; and throwing in Walter Mitty style points at every opportunity. For example: KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is on frequency, five north at 6500 feet. We'll teardrop over Runway 29 and enter the pattern on the 45 for a short approach to a touch-and-go, then departing south back to KYYY . KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is overhead at 6500 feet, teardropping over Runway 29 to enter the pattern on the 45 for a short approach to a touch-and-go, then departing south back to KYYY . KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is on the 45 for Runway 29, doing a short approach to a touch-and-go, then departing south back to KYYY. N54321, we see you on crosswind. Do you have us in sight? (N54321 responds, a conversation is had, often with an "ADS-B position checks!" thrown in for good measure.) KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is on (downwind/base/final) for Runway 29, number two behind N54321, for a touch-and-go, then departing south back to KYYY. KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is actually going to make this a full stop. We'll exit at Alpha 4 and taxi back on Alpha. KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is clear of Runway 29 at Alpha 4 short of Alpha, we'll be taxiing Alpha 4 back to Runway 29. KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is taking the active, Runway 29, for a straight out departure, followed by a south turn back to KYYY. KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is climbing out on the departure leg from Runway 29 at 5600 feet, we'll be turning south and departing back to KYYY. KXXX traffic, bugsmasher N1234 is departing the area to the south, back to KYYY, LAAAST CALLLLLL.... SEEYA! I wish I was exaggerating about this, but I'm not. Any single one of those calls might be forgivable by itself. And I wouldn't particularly care about it if we were some sleepy airport in the middle of nowhere. But as other airports have increasingly shunned pattern work, ours has become the go-to-spot in the metro area for touch-and-gos, and it's not unusual to get half a dozen airplanes in the pattern at the same time. That'd be fine if people could have a holistic view of why we communicate on CTAF. But there always seem to be a couple of training mill pilots in the mix; making their "standard callouts" as above; obliviously stepping on an aircraft trying to broadcast their turn to final, in order to get in their "taxiing back" standard callout; and sprinkling in 30-second, two-way conversations with whoever is closest to them, in the supposed name of traffic avoidance. All this ignores the fact that they're taking away the frequency from everyone else in the pattern. Again, the real purpose of the CTAF is to provide immediate, actionable information to other aircraft on frequency. Where you are right now, maybe what you're doing in the next 10 seconds, and that's it. That doesn't mean the rules are rigid, that you can't ask a question, or say "Hi, Bob" on a quiet day. But before you key up that mic, you should ask yourself how busy it is, and if it's busy, how the thing you're about to say is actually helpful to anyone other than yourself. In that environment, last call doesn't pass the smell test. And if it's not appropriate at a busy airport where there's a bunch of other traffic, why would it be appropriate anywhere else?

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.