ADF GOAT?

[Arnold]

You seem to insulate that pilots aren't pilots any more. What are they now?

I'm going to go with insinuate rather than insulate. No, they are just different. The skills to properly manipulate the computers in a technically advanced aircraft are different from those required to fly instruments 30 - 40 years ago and are no doubt impressive. The ability to exercise judgement is comparable to those used by pilots since the beginning.

 

[Groundpounder]

I'm going to go with insinuate rather than insulate. No, they are just different. The skills to properly manipulate the computers in a technically advanced aircraft are different from those required to fly instruments 30 - 40 years ago and are no doubt impressive. The ability to exercise judgement is comparable to those used by pilots since the beginning.

Whoops, obviously I shouldn't have slept through spell checking class. And I agree with your assessment of current pilots vs the pilots of yesteryear.

 

[MooneyDriver78]

Back when pilots were Pilots and magenta lines were brought to you by Crayola . . . need I go on?

Translation for the younger pilots: “Get off my lawn!”

 

[Arnold]

Translation for the younger pilots: “Get off my lawn!”

Today's pilots have different skills, see above. Magenta lines are good. And while I am old, I'm not old enough that I flew A-N ranges.

 

[David Megginson]

I still have a Narco ADF 841 installed in my plane (all alone at the bottom right of the panel). If all else fails, I can navigate with this as long as there are still AM radio stations. I test it most flights, tuning in NDBs along my route. GPS outages are rare, but I've flown through two of them so far, so I'm just slightly paranoid (especially as they're decommissioning so many VORs).

My last NDB approach in actual IMC was summer 2017, a few weeks before I installed my GTN 650 GPS.

 

[David Megginson]

As for the pilots these days thing, there have always been complaints.

Pilots in the 1930s chasing the needles on their steam gauges instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 1950s chasing their gyros instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 1970s chasing their VOR CDI instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 1990s chasing the magenta line instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 2010s fixating on satellite weather and synthetic vision on their tablets instead of flying the plane.

I think there's a pattern in here somewhere. Pilots are magpies: as soon as you put anything shiny and new in front of us, we can't tear our eyes away from it, and forget the basic stick-and-rudder stuff that's actually needed for flying.

 

[Velocity173]

ARN-89 never failed me and at $39K, what a bargain!

https://aeroval.com/ref/18559/R-1496A-ARN-89/

 

[Arnold]

ARN-89 never failed me and at $39K, what a bargain!

https://aeroval.com/ref/18559/R-1496A-ARN-89/

Looks like a nice radio. And only costs a little more than twice what my airplane cost me. I'm guessing the $39K price was decades ago so in today's dollars maybe four times what my ship cost in May '19.

 

[Arnold]

I still have a Narco ADF 841 installed in my plane (all alone at the bottom right of the panel). If all else fails, I can navigate with this as long as there are still AM radio stations. I test it most flights, tuning in NDBs along my route. GPS outages are rare, but I've flown through two of them so far, so I'm just slightly paranoid (especially as they're decommissioning so many VORs).

My last NDB approach in actual IMC was summer 2017, a few weeks before I installed my GTN 650 GPS.

View attachment 82134

Nice panel. In my limited experience Canada has always put more reliance on NDB navigation than the U.S.

 

[Brad W]

As for the pilots these days thing, there have always been complaints.

Pilots in the 1930s chasing the needles on their steam gauges instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 1950s chasing their gyros instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 1970s chasing their VOR CDI instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 1990s chasing the magenta line instead of flying the plane.
Pilots in the 2010s fixating on satellite weather and synthetic vision on their tablets instead of flying the plane.

I think there's a pattern in here somewhere. Pilots are magpies: as soon as you put anything shiny and new in front of us, we can't tear our eyes away from it, and forget the basic stick-and-rudder stuff that's actually needed for flying.

I was just reading an update from Steve Fligtchops...talking about upgrading his home sim. Seems he's done with the gns430 sim and needs to upgrade to a G1000 panel.
I think this speaks to something related here..that i'll admit is causing me a tiny minor bit of anxiety getting back into the rental fleet again.

When I learned to fly and bounced between several different rentals, there were a few that had Loran units, and towards the tail end before I stopped flying a few that had early GPS units...the kind that were basically a bunch of cryptic numbers, no color moving maps.... I never did learn or feel comfortable with any of them...and many were tagged INOP anyway.
but
the planes ALL had standard stuff and it didn't much matter really which brands. A pilot could jump from pretty much any airplane to another and just know how to work the audio panel, the coms, the VOR stuff, the DME, and the ADF.
Now days it seems you'll need at least a half an hour running down the battery with avionics ON, or maybe more...and it seems time in a home sim, to transition from different units from the same manufacturer...not to mention switching from say Garmin to Avidyne for example...

I don't know... the situational awareness now is mind blowing, but there is some beauty in the standardized simplicity of old....

 

[Arnold]

Brad makes an excellent point. In many ways the level of technical knowledge necessary to safely and efficiently fly technically advanced aircraft exceeds that needed for a type rating back in the 1980's and into the 1990's In those days I needed to learn a bit about EFIS and AHARS and reversion modes, but most of the technical knowledge was systems. Now I don't know, but it is surely (I know . . . don't call me Shirley) more about the avionics than the hydraulics.

 

[dtuuri]

Yep, imo, if it takes longer to plan a flight now than it did 35 years ago because of the technology, then it isn't "progress". Where was the leadership when these boxes were being conceived? Nobody in authority had the guts to demand some standardization? You never had to read a 200 page Narco, King or Collins handbook to operate a VOR head, just a few sentences in any of a handful of textbooks. Bah to technology!

 

[Velocity173]

Looks like a nice radio. And only costs a little more than twice what my airplane cost me. I'm guessing the $39K price was decades ago so in today's dollars maybe four times what my ship cost in May '19.

Yeah. I can’t even imagine what our crappy monochrome GPS costs.

 

[David Megginson]

Yep, imo, if it takes longer to plan a flight now than it did 35 years ago because of the technology, then it isn't "progress". Where was the leadership when these boxes were being conceived? Nobody in authority had the guts to demand some standardization? You never had to read a 200 page Narco, King or Collins handbook to operate a VOR head, just a few sentences in any of a handful of textbooks. Bah to technology!

The FAA tries to explain some of the standard concepts here (well, standard a number of years back), but there's only so much you can do:

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/advanced_avionics_handbook/

When I'm flying cross-country, I often tune my ADF to different NDBs and watch the needle swing around as I pass. I figure if there's ever an urgent emergency, I can just turn towards the needle and I'll be heading (more or less) towards an airport while I deal with everything else. In comparison, even a simple Direct-To on a GPS is a lot of fussy taps.