How do you thank a controller

Lndwarrior said:
Last summer i got into some wicked turbulence (for me). It was so bad there was no way I could use my touch screen gps while controlling the aircraft. I wanted to get out of this at the closest airport but no way could i get the freq's up on the gps. I ended up flying another 20 miles to an airport that i knew the freqs.

Lesson learned - I now print out kneeboard data for all airports along my route of flight.

Touchscreens are great - except in significant turbulence in light aircraft.
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Even in light turbulence and chop the touch screens get difficult to use, especially if IFR where a course or altitude deviation gets more serious. Its one of the reasons why I hate the move to touchscreen in the cockpit. I understand it allows for a better space usage with a larger screen and more bells and whistles/options on the GPS but you very quickly sacrifice usability under certain conditions (which also includes flying with gloves such as in cold weather).

Add to that dirty fingerprints on the screen and feature bloat that no one really uses or understands (but may be valid questions on a checkride)... There's other reasons too but those are the 3 big ones that come to mind.
 
apr911 said:
Even in light turbulence and chop the touch screens get difficult to use, especially if IFR where a course or altitude deviation gets more serious. Its one of the reasons why I hate the move to touchscreen in the cockpit. I understand it allows for a better space usage with a larger screen and more bells and whistles/options on the GPS but you very quickly sacrifice usability under certain conditions (which also includes flying with gloves such as in cold weather).

Add to that dirty fingerprints on the screen and feature bloat that no one really uses or understands (but may be valid questions on a checkride)... There's other reasons too but those are the 3 big ones that come to mind.
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I ended up getting the Avidyne 540, so it has push buttons that can be used in place of the touch screen.
 
Also, since I couldn’t find a number, on my way back I asked the appch controller for a phone number...I told him I wasn’t mad, I just wanted to send a thank you, lol.
 
Lndwarrior said:
Last summer i got into some wicked turbulence (for me). It was so bad there was no way I could use my touch screen gps while controlling the aircraft. I wanted to get out of this at the closest airport but no way could i get the freq's up on the gps. I ended up flying another 20 miles to an airport that i knew the freqs.
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How did you get them into the radios 20 miles further on? Less turbulence?

Does your GPS have the Comm built in and does it do auto-fill of frequencies into standby? This lowers the touch screen need significantly on most of them.

Side-note: Many touch screen GPSs can be fully controlled from the hard knobs including menu items, etc. It’s worth practicing using them that way once in a while in good weather for bumpy days.

Garmin is particularly good at this and there’s not much that’s difficult to get to in the GTNs from the hard knobs, but the brain does get lazy and wants to use the touch screen.

Often in turbulence it’s easier to get ahold of the hard knobs and spin away on them, just like the 430/530...
 
BTW @flyingcheesehead has the ultimate solution for turbulence. He popped for the Garmin intercom with voice recognition. The capability of that thing from his descriptions is quite impressive.

“Open the pod bay doors Hal, right after you load the RNAV 28 and activate it for me...” LOL.
 
I have called the MSP Center once and our local controllers a couple of times to say thanks, least I could do considering they deal with all the bull s&it I throw at them
 
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