IFR avionics panel planning - need for VOR /LOC/GS?

[kortopates]

I get the theoretical argument for safety due to the higher redundancy of glass. But is it borne by data? How many lives were lost due to vacuum failure in hard IMC in recent years? I think it is a function of how much hard IFR people actually fly. Yes, if 50% of my flying was in IMC I would definitely want the added redundancy. But I calculated and only about 3% of my flying is in IMC. If my money was unlimited, sure, I'd spend the money on having triply redundant attitude and directional data. But given that I do have almost doubly redundant data (if vacuum fails, I have my Stratus AHRS + iphone mounted on the yoke straight in my line of vision, both with battery power if also have electrical failure), and knowing that 97% of the time a failure will be a non-event (in VMC), I can live with that. I'd much rather fly more and practice more with instructors, I think safety would be much better served that way for the money. 

Fatals accidents are far more about lack of proficiency not the equipment.

Even with the first generation Aspens that were based on a single integrated chip and would red-X out everything with some ice on the pitot tubes yet the few pilots that experienced this still made it down using an ipad if needed.

But vacuum failures have and continue to kill pilots, which isn’t going to happen with glass, yet the biggest contribution remains a much larger group of pilots that are not even legally IFR current, let alone proficient, that fly IFR when they have no business doing so and get in over their head during a high workload period and loose control. Their equipment typically had nothing to do with the accident.

But if your looking for improved safety with modern avionics it comes from eliminating the many kinds of accidents that wouldn’t have happened if the pilot was using glass, including the non current pilot that has a vacuum failure, and even the crazy stupid pilot that relies on his VFR portable gps to fly an rnav approach to minimums, or the pilot that has missed radio calls from the wrong freq and then missed the left base vector to the ILS in IMC and just blindly continued straight ahead into a mountain because he lacked the situational awareness to know where he was. But even this comes down to proficiency too.
But with glass it would have been far less likely to happen, but you have to know how to use it.

So as an example of a pilot that may have the glass but doesn’t know how to use it are two CAP pilots that while flying VFR 9000’ at night in the Las Vegas area still managed to fly into a mountain with a G1000 - just unbelievable!

So in sum, you are totally right to prioritize working on your proficiency since that is always the most important factor in avoiding an IMC accident. But glass and some knowledge on how to use it is going to help eliminate many of the loss of control instrument accidents. But that is going to be really hard to show statistically because they’re very small numbers compared to the non-current pilots doing stupid stuff responsible for overwhelming majority of IMC accidents.

So keep prioritizing proficiency.
But in the end what avionics you fly behind comes down to personal choice and one’s priorities/budget.

On topic of emergency/partial panel training Vance brings up very important points in that everyone gets trained on 6-pack partial panel yet very few practice as they should after earning their IR - hence the big emergency when it happens Imc. But glass is very different and more complex because fewer pilots are likely to understand all the failure modes and be prepared for what capabilities they’ll loose- but for the most part the glass panel will have sufficient backups to fly the plane with limited capabilities. For example loose the PFD in a G1000 mooney, and the MFD will become the PFD automatically but with only the #2 COM/NAV/GPS. They get more complicated from there such as loosing Air Data… but depending on cause we still have backup pitot-static instruments.


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[Vance Harral]

4 hours ago, kortopates said:

But that is going to be really hard to show statistically because they’re very small numbers compared to the non-current pilots doing stupid stuff responsible for overwhelming majority of IMC accidents.

If it's "really hard to show statistically", that means it's not much of an actual safety improvement in practice.

 

4 hours ago, kortopates said:

So keep prioritizing proficiency.

On this we can agree.  I especially appreciate @AndreiC's comment that in a universe of finite "safety dollars", the bias should be toward proficiency with equipment you already have, rather than an equipment upgrade that is dubiously advertised as providing inherently more safety.

[kortopates]

Just because the accident record doesn’t provide sufficient details to ask and answer such questions about avionics safety advantages doesn’t mean there aren’t real benefits.
But the fact remains the overwhelming number of fatal IMC accidents are from lack of proficiency which will continue to drown out benefits of modern glass avionics.

The accident record data also doesn’t bear out that having onboard traffic and weather are improving safety either. But nevertheless nobody can argue they aren’t very helpful safety enhancing tools - when not mis used. So much so the FAA wants to make AdsB-In a requirement. But i think the problem is some pilots feel emboldened by the technology to launch when they wouldn’t have otherwise and then take bigger risks either not understanding on board weather product limitations or just don’t care.

Further i’ll argue a modern engine monitor is a very underrated safety tool that can not only save your butt but also your engine and airplane when you know how to use it. I rank its importance up there with traffic, GPS and weather. But like every other tool you need to know how to use it.


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[Vance Harral]

3 hours ago, kortopates said:

But nevertheless nobody can argue they aren’t very helpful safety enhancing tools - when not mis used

But... the four weasel words at the end of your sentence are the crux of the matter.  It is not only possible, but in fact common, for the mis-use of technology to wind up causing more trouble than the original problem the technology was supposed to fix.

A case where I notice this commonly in modern-day GA ops is the mis-use of traffic displays.  I really wish the FAA and/or industry training providers would provide better guidance on how to actually use them.  There is a prevalent, dangerous assumption in our community that proper use of traffic displays is "obvious", but I've seen clients do some truly moronic things in response to something they saw (or think they saw) on an iPad.  I have opinions about this, of course, but my opinions and actions might be moronic as well - who knows?  Meanwhile, we're 5 years into mandatory ADS-B out in rule airspace, and I can find absolutely no evidence in the McSpadden report or other sources that the midair collision rate has changed at all.

[kortopates]

20 minutes ago, Vance Harral said:

But... the four weasel words at the end of your sentence are the crux of the matter.  It is not only possible, but in fact common, for the mis-use of technology to wind up causing more trouble than the original problem the technology was supposed to fix.

A case where I notice this commonly in modern-day GA ops is the mis-use of traffic displays.  I really wish the FAA and/or industry training providers would provide better guidance on how to actually use them.  There is a prevalent, dangerous assumption in our community that proper use of traffic displays is "obvious", but I've seen clients do some truly moronic things in response to something they saw (or think they saw) on an iPad.  I have opinions about this, of course, but my opinions and actions might be moronic as well - who knows?  Meanwhile, we're 5 years into mandatory ADS-B out in rule airspace, and I can find absolutely no evidence in the McSpadden report or other sources that the midair collision rate has changed at all.

I totally agree, I think where I am disagreeing (perhaps) is that even though the accident totals may not show improvement  with the high tech safety tools available to us now, due to a lack of proficiency and mis use of the tools, it doesn't mean a great proportion of the pilot community can't benefit from them - those will always be the ones that seek training, work on their proficiency, and learn their proper use - anyway you want to put it. Do you really see no value in these technological advancements if the population as a whole doesn't show any improvement? My choices only come down to if I can see value to my own safety and benefit. 

[McMooney]

give these guys a call, they really took care of me : Horizon Avionics – Horizon Avionics Blog

 

[donkaye, MCFI]

My simplistic viewpoint:

With the relatively inexpensive cost of a backup AI I won't do training in actual IMC in an airplane that doesn't have a 2nd AI either mechanical or electric.  It's risk management to me.

One of the best items Garmin has come out with for traffic situational awareness is Target Trend.  I now won't leave home without a source that has it.  Absolute motion is nearly useless versus the Relative motion of Target Trend.

Argue six pack versus glass all day long, but when I'm training students who have less instruments that do not give me the overall situational awareness I am use to with glass, then I am thankful for my fully glass airplane and for my instructor airplane normalizers, the Aera 760 and GDL 52, that go with me on all my student training flights.  And the difference between a couple of GI275s or G5s and the bigger displays, G500 TXi or G3X, is the difference between night and day and I've flown extensively with all of them.

Arguing with pro glass people and pro six pack people about which is better is an exercise in futility.  I long ago realized that there is no way I can change the point of view of anyone on anything.

[Hank]

12 hours ago, Vance Harral said:

Meanwhile, we're 5 years into mandatory ADS-B out in rule airspace, and I can find absolutely no evidence in the McSpadden report or other sources that the midair collision rate has changed at all.

The purpose of ADS-B Out was to save the FAA money by offloading radar maintenance onto pilots and owners. ADS-B In was the carrot to make the Big Stick less noticeable. Safety was always a side topic, the crux of the matter was budgeting and reducing radar maintenance expenses. 

[Hank]

On 5/16/2025 at 2:33 AM, kortopates said:

The modern glass panel not only eliminates the unreliable vacuum pump it provides redundancy in virtually everything including Com, Nav, ADHARS, GPS. And the aircraft will typically include dual alternators or dual batterys and/or a standby alternator and some with many more capabilities for IFR. And of course the modern digital AP's are far more capable . . .

My C has a back up vacuum pump, but is not certified for second alternator or battery, mainly because there is physically nowhere to put either one. Same for most of the Vintage Mooneys. Dual nav/coms through King, no dual ADHRS or GPS, but I do usually take a tablet with me on trips (and only sometimes stow it with my luggage), rarely on local VFR flights. It counts as eye candy, but the geolocated approach plates can be nice, even if rarely used. 

The only digital autopilot certified for install is Garmin, and it also requires G5s and other stuff, totaling near the cost of my plane. No thank you.

My Brittain AccuTrak and AccuFlight still work, but I'm debating the Dynon Skyview, who conveniently omitted the Pre-J models from the autopilot STC. Hmmm, "more thinking need."

[Slick Nick]

On 5/16/2025 at 9:15 AM, kortopates said:

IPad yes, but certified Garmin i don’t think so.
But if happens i have two!


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Yes, the certified Garmin products do lock up, and it happens much more often than you think. Especially dangerous is when one of the “all in one” units craps out, you lose everything and the only way to recover it is a complete power down. In flight, if you’re in IMC, that’s a dangerous situation. 

[dkkim73]

9 hours ago, Slick Nick said:

Yes, the certified Garmin products do lock up, and it happens much more often than you think. Especially dangerous is when one of the “all in one” units craps out, you lose everything and the only way to recover it is a complete power down. In flight, if you’re in IMC, that’s a dangerous situation. 

The underlying technology certainly can fail, between HW faults and the "program verification problem" (you can't entirely producty what most software will do). But in my mind, getting a TSOed panel unit drops that risk a lot. At least on the HW side... I was impressed to see old school per unit testing in the Garmin factory in KS. 

On the SW side I think that's mitigated by more careful release etc.. But not zero. So... Anyone here ever had a G1000 total failure? 

 

[kortopates]

Yes, the certified Garmin products do lock up, and it happens much more often than you think. Especially dangerous is when one of the “all in one” units craps out, you lose everything and the only way to recover it is a complete power down. In flight, if you’re in IMC, that’s a dangerous situation. 

Maybe possible but certified GPS has been around for 31 years now and I’ve never seen or heard of a lock up with TSO’d avionics. So although possible it’s got to be very rare. But it’s also a reason why i don’t have a non-tso’d G3X in my panel and also why my panel is fully redundancy. If i did need to reboot something i always have another tso’d unit that i can navigate by, communicate by or use for instruments.

I think a bigger concern was the first generation Aspen, who’s STC allowed you eliminate all the backup instruments if you had multiple Aspens. I though this was crazy because of the nature of the single integrated chip for the ADHRS was vulnerable to loss of any input killing it entirely. All it took was an iced pitot tube to X out the entire display and it didn’t matter how many Aspens you had! Lots of videos on that issue out there.


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[toto]

2 hours ago, kortopates said:

Maybe possible but certified GPS has been around for 31 years now and I’ve never seen or heard of a lock up with TSO’d avionics.

I had one experience years ago where my GTN froze, went blank and then rebooted. The whole thing probably took 20 seconds but it felt much longer. The avionics shop couldn’t find a problem with it and it’s never happened again. I chalked it up to a bad software release. 

[Vance Harral]

On 5/16/2025 at 7:07 PM, kortopates said:

Do you really see no value in these technological advancements if the population as a whole doesn't show any improvement?

Well, that's an interesting question.  Thanks for asking it.

I do feel some responsibility as a flight instructor to positively influence safety for the pilot population as a whole.  But I'm not impractical about it.  There certainly can be products and technologies that make you better and/or safer, but not me; and vice versa.  I'm not out to ban or even criticize them just because they doesn't help everyone equally.

I also understand your argument that maybe certain technologies benefit only the cream of the pilot crop - which includes us, natch - with our numbers being so small that the overall needles don't move even though the improvement for a special group is very real.  But I think if you're being honest with yourself, you have to consider a couple of other possibilities, that are frankly more likely.

The first is the possibility you only think something makes you safer when it really doesn't.  I observe this pretty regularly instructing a gen-pop pilot clientele: over-dependence on iPads, comfort in backup instrumentation they've never trained with, reliance on cliches like "speed is life", and "the only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire", etc.  There's no question folks using high end technology feel more safe with it, and that has some benefits independent of actual safety.  But when I can muster the energy to debate, I find a lot confirmation bias about safety - just brute force statements that this or that gizmo is "obviously" safer.  And I get that - it's just human nature.  People who spend a lot of money on high-end avionics (or brand new cars or home security systems, etc.) nearly always remain convinced it made them safer.  But since it would be very painful to admit the investment might have been worthless, almost none of them are really open to external evaluation of this thesis.  Like you - they're simply not persuaded by statistics (or anything else).  I'm not immune to this myself, of course.  The avionics I have in my airplane surely must be the absolute sweet spot of capability and safety vs. cost.

The second issue is more complicated, but worth raising.  It's the possibility that even if you're actually safer by yourself with certain equipment, others are inappropriately emboldened by it to do things that make them more risk to you.  e.g. a pilot with inadequate training and/or situational awareness showing up in your IFR cloud bank or busy traffic pattern, who would not have otherwise been there.  The canonical example of this is the pilot who is not instrument proficient (I care not whether they are "legal") inappropriately relying on an autopilot to get them through the clouds.

As an active instructor who doesn't necessarily focus on Mooney-specific training, I observe a certain degree of technology mis-use on a pretty regular basis.  I'm sure that experience colors my thinking about avionics, and creates bias.  But the only way I know of to combat my own bias is to look for statistically significant changes in the accident data (not year-to-year blips on counts so small as to be meaningless, such as AOPA sometimes touts).  I'm just not seeing anything meaningful there.  And I think it's likely because technology just doesn't help as much as we want to think it does.  So I'm sympathetic to questions like the one in this thread about what's really needed for a particular mission - high-end avionics for IFR, turbochargers for mountain flying, and so forth.

In summary, I guess I'd say yeah, I'm not very interested in safety systems and technologies that can't move the needle on overall accident statistics, and I'll likely continue to be a skeptic when that's the case.  But I'm just some guy on the internet, certainly not the arbiter of what others should put in their cockpit.  To that end...

On 5/16/2025 at 10:14 PM, donkaye, MCFI said:

Arguing with pro glass people and pro six pack people about which is better is an exercise in futility.  I long ago realized that there is no way I can change the point of view of anyone on anything.

Me too.  But the value of debate is not in changing someone's point of view - just in getting them to think more deeply about it.  I'm sure anyone reading my post here is smart enough to draw reasonable conclusions and make reasonable choices.  I like to think I'm helping them do so.

[MikeOH]

2 hours ago, Vance Harral said:

And I think it's likely because technology just doesn't help as much as we want to think it does. 

That is the key statement in your entire post.  Of course, that's my bias talking as I had already formed that same opinion!

I'd also posit that it may, in fact, reduce safety as the systems are much more sophisticated and require a much higher level of training to use proficiently...I wonder how many pilots really obtain sufficient training?

It's the old argument that you are not a safe pilot unless you understand everything about everything in your avionics.  So, the guy that is a perfectly proficient instrument pilot with his six-pack and dual KX-155s installs the full glass dream panel from Garmin and rather than becoming safer he is now a menace to skies without an enormous amount of training.  My point and question is have we reached a state where the amount of initial and recurrent training, and recency/frequency of use, required to operate state-of-the-art glass panels (including understanding their failure modes and proper mitigation) is too time consuming to really result in an improvement to safety?

@Vance Harral and @kortopates I'm curious what your experiences as CFII's have been in the effort required for students to master modern avionics. And, how perishable that knowledge is.

[Paul Thomas]

7 hours ago, MikeOH said:

That is the key statement in your entire post.  Of course, that's my bias talking as I had already formed that same opinion!

I'd also posit that it may, in fact, reduce safety as the systems are much more sophisticated and require a much higher level of training to use proficiently...I wonder how many pilots really obtain sufficient training?

It's the old argument that you are not a safe pilot unless you understand everything about everything in your avionics.  So, the guy that is a perfectly proficient instrument pilot with his six-pack and dual KX-155s installs the full glass dream panel from Garmin and rather than becoming safer he is now a menace to skies without an enormous amount of training.  My point and question is have we reached a state where the amount of initial and recurrent training, and recency/frequency of use, required to operate state-of-the-art glass panels (including understanding their failure modes and proper mitigation) is too time consuming to really result in an improvement to safety?

@Vance Harral and @kortopates I'm curious what your experiences as CFII's have been in the effort required for students to master modern avionics. And, how perishable that knowledge is.

My favorite approach is an ILS, with a 6 pack, due to it's simplicity.

[Vance Harral]

8 hours ago, MikeOH said:

I'm curious what your experiences as CFII's have been in the effort required for students to master modern avionics.

My anecdotal observations are the same as you've read about elsewhere.  But to put them in my own words:

1. No more effort required to obtain basic competence in a specific aircraft that has dual G5s and a GNS/GTN radio or similar, vs. steam.  Specifically, these "modern" avionics aren't making it harder for newbie pilots to keep the greasy side down and navigate to a nearby airport under VFR conditions for a $100 hamburger; and students are no more intimidated by seeing them in the cockpit the first time than in the old days.  Not surprising given the dominance of modern electronics in our everyday lives.
2. Standardization is a problem for renters and instructors, with each new product changing the UI in non-trivial ways from prior products.  In 1990, the most sophisticated thing you'd likely find on a NAV/COM was a flip-flop button.  Times are wildly different now.  Recall that one of our biggest advocates for high-end avionics - the honorable @donkaye, MCFI - frequently mentions how he brings his personal portable avionics with him on training flights to "normalize" the environment.  That's completely understandable and not a criticism, but it also points to a training challenge.
3. Because of (2), there is more sensitivity by individual pilots to the individual aircraft they prefer to rent than I recall being previously true in rental environments.  We have a pair of 172s at our local flight school that differ from each other only in that one is equipped with a GTN650 and another with a GNS430.  The underlying logic in the boxes is the same but the UI is different, and pilots are understandably more intimidated by this than in the old days when the difference would have been a KX-155 vs. a KX-170.  As a result, when airplane X goes down for maintenance, students are somewhat more likely to cancel instead of switching to airplane Y.  That has a small impact on training, so I'd say it results in more effort for trainees, but only for indirect reasons of scheduling.  This isn't an issue at a giant part 141 school with a fleet of identically-equipped aircraft, but that's not the environment I operate in.
4. Teaching GPS nav is easy because essentially everyone comes to the table with positive transference from GPS guidance on their phone.  There was no such analog in the 1980s for pilots trying to master VOR and ADF navigation, so that's gotten better.  Definitely less effort to teach primary VFR radio nav.
5. Teaching secondary radio nav seems harder because there's no positive transference (a lot of newbie pilots have never even tuned a frequency on a car radio).  I'm not sure this is significantly different from reluctance to learn secondary nav in other eras, though.  I wasn't excited about learning how to fly ADF approaches in 2004, though I eventually came to appreciate them.  I'm sure the same was true of VOR vs. 4-course range.
6. Moving beyond the basics, "mastery" of an avionics stack is definitely more difficult now.  Mostly this is because there's more capability, e.g. you can't fly a VNAV profile with a KX-170 and a Brittain autopilot, so VNAV just wasn't a thing to master back in the day.  But see the next list item below about "mode confusion".  Anyway, a great viewpoint on this sort of thing is to start with this is @midlifeflyer's list of "GPS tasks pilots don't know how to do".  He's correct that most pilots don't know how to do the things on the list.  They wouldn't have had to back in the day.  Note that many of them involve understanding how to make a GPS navigator work more like a VOR, which is a thing we may wish wasn't necessary, but is sometimes important to fly IFR in a system with a lot of historical inertia.
7. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the multi-functionality of MFDs and all-in-one com/nav/gps/transponder devices is a distraction that I'd like to see go away.  One of the biggest barriers to avionics mastery is getting pilots to be comfortable when their displays are in a different mode than they're used to: different pages on an MFD, reversionary modes on a PFD, not to mention the "all in one" ness of a sophisticated EFB such as Foreflight.  Anxiety about this is entirely understandable - one is nervous that you won't be able to get your gizmo back to the mode you're used to.  But LCD displays are so cheap and ubiquitous now that it would be better if we had a dozen, small, independent displays with no mode settings, vs. the typical setup of a small handful of large displays that do "everything" in various modes.  I'm hopeful this will change in the future (for cars as well as airplanes).

On that last point, a great example of it from my personal experience involves VOR navigation.  I can eventually convince primary students they have to understand VORs - at least for their check ride - even though I know they don't really want to and hope to never use them.  But I have scant luck convincing them to use the #2 NAV radio and its mechanical CDI to do so.  You'd think it would be an easy sell.  The steps are just: dial frequency, press audio panel button to ident, turn CDI knob.  But for whatever reason, most of them think it's "better" to click a mode knob/button to set the #1 GPS/NAV/COM to VLOC mode, click another dial or button to select nav frequency tuning, wait for the unit to auto-identify the frequency (made more complicated on the GTN navigators by the fact they display the identifier from their database before they display an auto-morse-code ident); then click the menu button on their G5 HSI, roll over to OBS selection, dial a course, then back out of the menu mode.  All this so they can get green needles on an LCD display rather than use the mechanical CDI.  I never criticize this, as it's part of "mastering" the avionics.  But it takes some effort not to visually roll my eyes or make a snarky comment, especially when they get all screwed up halfway through the process.

 

 

[dkkim73]

27 minutes ago, Vance Harral said:

But I have scant luck convincing them to use the #2 NAV radio and its mechanical CDI to do so.  You'd think it would be an easy sell. 

That points to some difference in mental models, I might wonder... or maybe lack of independent mental models for the VOR/LOC? I'll fly an ILS with GPS routing from the IAF to the localizer and dial the VOR as a backup (also part of the missed). I find myself sometimes wishing for a 2nd CDI whenever I'm trying to back things up with a VOR in earnest (for practice, I've never had a primary GPS failure); ie. dial in a "safety radial" along terrain or a lead radial, and it's easy to "feel" which side of the map your on by looking at the CDI (e.g. NE vs. SW) as a independent backup.  In practice, it's a pain to switch the source to the main HSI for the reasons you note (and I would have to swap AP to HDG mode while switching between magenta and green guidance, if using the AP/FD, or manually hold heading while doing the button dance). So I end up using the handy "RMI-like" needles around the HSI on the G1000 instead whenever I'm actually using VOR #2. 

So maybe you're thinking that's all an artifact of training first with VORs. But it also makes me think 1. using VORs as a fluid backup to GPS might benefit from specific workflows 2. if you don't get this "feel", it also limits your understanding of the CDI function of the HSI, and how to interpret it beyond "stay on the line". This would be grossly highlighted by then trying to use OBS mode in anger. 

PP thoughts only, *not* a CFI, though I am a backseat driver...

 

[AJ88V]

On 5/16/2025 at 8:35 PM, Vance Harral said:

A case where I notice this commonly in modern-day GA ops is the mis-use of traffic displays.  I really wish the FAA and/or industry training providers would provide better guidance on how to actually use them.  There is a prevalent, dangerous assumption in our community that proper use of traffic displays is "obvious", but I've seen clients do some truly moronic things in response to something they saw (or think they saw) on an iPad.  I have opinions about this, of course, but my opinions and actions might be moronic as well - who knows?  Meanwhile, we're 5 years into mandatory ADS-B out in rule airspace, and I can find absolutely no evidence in the McSpadden report or other sources that the midair collision rate has changed at all.

Not that I have a ton of experience using ForeFlight on my iPad, but I did/do find the traffic displays somewhat confusing.  It took me a bit of digging, but I figured out how to turn off all the traffic way out of my altitude zone (say +/- 2000 ft, ok forgetting the details).  Getting rid of the no-factor high altitude jet traffic in busy DC airspace really helped.

Please post up if anybody has a link to a video or better discussion of this topic. Thanks

[Vance Harral]

3 minutes ago, dkkim73 said:

I'll fly an ILS with GPS routing from the IAF to the localizer

Ah, good that you bring this up.

While this sort of hybrid navigation approach is cool when performed properly, it's also a recipe for instrument students to simply not tune the ILS/VOR at all.  This happened on a training flight day before yesterday.  The student clicked right though the pop-up about the GPS approach being "for situational awareness only", and simply never tuned the VOR for the approach at all, on either radio.  Some navigators can auto-switch to the ground-based navaid, but even in those that are capable, whether it does so or not is actually a configuration setting that varies from airplane to airplane.  Again - a problem of UI changes and lack of standardization.  These days, I teach my instrument students that one should have a constant, low-level paranoia about nav radios.  In addition to periodically checking things like fuel remaining, engine status, one should also be regularly questioning what source is driving the HSI, what leg of the flight plan is active, and what mode the autopilot is in.

19 minutes ago, dkkim73 said:

So I end up using the handy "RMI-like" needles around the HSI on the G1000 instead whenever I'm actually using VOR #2. 

RMIs to both ground-based navaids and GPS waypoints can be very useful, but they're another thing to teach that just wasn't really available in GA for most of instrument flying history.  Furthermore, whether an RMI is displayed or not is yet another configuration/preference setting.

[AJ88V]

 

Lots of great discussion in this thread.

One the subject of failures and redundancy, my vacuum pump crapped out on my last flight before losing my medical.  Fortunately a decent VFR day, but unnerving nonetheless. Returning to flight, I bought the little Dynon D3 "pocket panel" https://dynonavionics.com/pocket-panel.php which is a nifty bit of solid state redundancy on the cheap.  Sure, the airspeed, direction, and altitude are all GPS-derived, but the unit is completely self-contained (external GPS antenna works better in my Mooney), including hours of battery backup.  I also bought it to start getting used to looking at a modern glass display.  Biggest caveat is that my Mooney panel is so crowded that mounting options are practically nil for having it in good visual field.  Really want a better mounting option for it.

On 5/16/2025 at 9:07 PM, kortopates said:

I totally agree, I think where I am disagreeing (perhaps) is that even though the accident totals may not show improvement  with the high tech safety tools available to us now, due to a lack of proficiency and mis use of the tools, it doesn't mean a great proportion of the pilot community can't benefit from them - those will always be the ones that seek training, work on their proficiency, and learn their proper use - anyway you want to put it. Do you really see no value in these technological advancements if the population as a whole doesn't show any improvement? My choices only come down to if I can see value to my own safety and benefit. 

Your and @Vance Harral's points on proficiency are spot on.

One thing that concerns me about glass panels is the sheer amount of flexibility and button-ology.  While I'm very high-tech by career, I'm amazingly lazy when it comes to learning software.  Steam gauges are kind of fixed in their operation.  Learn their vagaries (precession in turns and acce/decel, errors setting barometric pressure, etc.) and they just become automatic.  Even that Dynon D3 is pretty stone simple.

But ForeFlight is a whole 'nother story.  So much capability, but it takes a lot of study and experience to learn how to get the benefit.  I hate the idea of scrolling menus in a high-workload situation (doubly so without an autopilot!).  AOPA Pilot mag had an article in the past year - part of their Sweepstakes airplane coverage - about Garmin's 3 day training program.  3 DAYS!  But I bet most of us just start using the stuff and never become proficient.

[Vance Harral]

17 minutes ago, AJ88V said:

It took me a bit of digging, but I figured out how to turn off all the traffic way out of my altitude zone

Yet another configuration setting that might benefit from standardization.  If I was in charge (which I'm definitely not), all traffic systems would have a fixed filter that is based on minutes to convergence.  Nothing more than 5 minutes away would ever be shown, under any circumstances.  The boxes have enough information about relative closure rates to implement this already, but the filters are currently based on distance rather than time, and the distances and filter are all completely configurable by each user.

[midlifeflyer]

1 hour ago, Vance Harral said:

Moving beyond the basics, "mastery" of an avionics stack is definitely more difficult now.  Mostly this is because there's more capability, e.g. you can't fly a VNAV profile with a KX-170 and a Brittain autopilot, so VNAV just wasn't a thing to master back in the day.  But see the next list item below about "mode confusion".  Anyway, a great viewpoint on this sort of thing is to start with this is @midlifeflyer's list of "GPS tasks pilots don't know how to do".  He's correct that most pilots don't know how to do the things on the list.  They wouldn't have had to back in the day.  Note that many of them involve understanding how to make a GPS navigator work more like a VOR, which is a thing we may wish wasn't necessary, but is sometimes important to fly IFR in a system with a lot of historical inertia.

To me, the bigger issue is that even those who learned on new avionics have trouble with them. I think I mentioned at some time that the final one on the list - clearing/bypassing the hold-in-lieu when cleared straight in - joined the list when three pilots in a row screwed it up. All three received their instrument ratings with a similar system (the task is the same with whatever you have). One of them also received their CFII in one.

That's my favorite instrument training rant these days. The nature of instrument training has always meant a lack of real-world tasks. With VOR and ADF, there was a limited amount of functionality so performing those tasks was at least part to the standard curriculum. But with the new avionics, there's a basic proficiency problem when passing the instrument checkride. 

[midlifeflyer]

43 minutes ago, Vance Harral said:

While this sort of hybrid navigation approach is cool when performed properly, it's also a recipe for instrument students to simply not tune the ILS/VOR at all.  This happened on a training flight day before yesterday.  The student clicked right though the pop-up about the GPS approach being "for situational awareness only", and simply never tuned the VOR for the approach at all, on either radio.  Some navigators can auto-switch to the ground-based navaid, but even in those that are capable, whether it does so or not is actually a configuration setting that varies from airplane to airplane.  Again - a problem of UI changes and lack of standardization.  These days, I teach my instrument students that one should have a constant, low-level paranoia about nav radios.  In addition to periodically checking things like fuel remaining, engine status, one should also be regularly questioning what source is driving the HSI, what leg of the flight plan is active, and what mode the autopilot is in.

I've seen that as well. In one, there was a checkride failure in which, after intercepting a VOR radial, the next task was a vectored ILS. The pilot blew thought the localizer. Twice before the DPE called it quits. You probably can guess exactly what happened. 

But while I agree it's a standardization issue, I don't think it's UI-related. Rather, I think there's a tendency to teach auto loading and autoswitching as the best way to do it. The result is that the trainee gets complacent and doesn't perform the basic tune and identify task. After all, the system will take care of it, won't it? Worse yet, that complacency gets translated into other tasks, mostly in the form of failure to do two things:

1. Look at what's next laterally and vertically.
2. Determine what needs to be done in order to accomplish that next step from both an aircraft configuration and avionics system standpoint. 

 

[Vance Harral]

36 minutes ago, midlifeflyer said:

The nature of instrument training has always meant a lack of real-world tasks.

About the only antidote I've found for this is the IFR XC flight in the aeronautical experience requirements for the instrument rating.  I had a great one with a student this weekend in which all kinds of real-world ambiguity was dealt with: departure procedures, negotiating amendments to enroute and approach clearances, actually allowing the student to miss radio calls when I could safely do so, etc.  I'm convinced that newly-mined IR pilots (including myself back in the day) would be in much better shape if they actually had to fly three or four such flights in pursuit of the rating, rather than only one.

But that's an expensive proposition both in dollars and time.  So like most instrument instructors, I wind up spending a lot of time with my IR students flying the same small set of approaches at nearby airports, often without actually filing IFR due to time constraints.  I don't feel great about it.  Simulators can help a little - I try to get my IR students a few sessions in our Redbird AATD that involve unfamiliar airports, and cross-country flights in which we fast-forward through the enroute portion.  But in the end, I just have to explain to them that the training environment is inherently disposed toward glossing over some things that will come up in real-world IFR flying.