Should I learn in a glass cockpit

bmacadoozle

bmacadoozle

Pre-Flight
Joined
Jan 18, 2021
Messages
42
Location
Michigan
Display Name
Display name:
bmacadoozle
The flight school i've chosen has all glass cockpits: DA20 with g500txi (my choice), C172 G1000, DA40 G1000.
Just wondering if this is good/bad and any advice ty
 
Are you starting on your Private Pilot?
 
Learn what you'll fly. The way things are going, don't be surprised if you end up flying glass sooner or later.
 
bmacadoozle said:
yeah
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter much what the panel contains. In fact, you're best to learn in an airplane with no gyros at all. A PPL is about learning to fly the plane. Not the panel.
Don't get absorbed with all the technology.
 
It doesn’t matter. Just make sure you’re looking mostly outside. It’s easy to get distracted with the screens.
 
I fly in them all -- nearly every possible combination of avionics you would ever see in light piston airplanes. And I see applicants all levels of the spectrum with regards to electronic tools (i.e. iPad with ForeFlight) all the way down to paper.

I'm a big fan of technology in light airplanes. GPS, big glass panel displays, and AOA indicators are wonderful advancements. But I have to say, looking at the entire cross-section of my private pilot applicants, a data point stands out. In general, those who demonstrated the best grasp of fundamentals learned in airplanes with minimal equipment; used paper sectional charts (or static, non-ownship "electronic charts") when learning pilotage; and produced a hand-written nav log for their cross-country flight assignment.

My flight instructor hat has been back in use lately as I've been teaching my 16 year-old daughter how to fly. For what it's worth, the above is representative of how I'm training her.

A common comment I hear is that it might be best for the modern student pilot to learn with the "tech of the day." Perhaps so. But I think it's easy enough to learn how to fly behind a glass panel, use GPS, etc. at any point in the training arc. It's much harder to re-learn the fundamentals when there were too many crutches allowed during training.

Just my opinion based on my experience. With the right instruction a good outcome is likely regardless of the type of equipment used.
 
Have your CFI switch the big TV screens off and learn to fly, or if you have the mental discipline, look outside. Initially they are a distraction, at least it was for me. As others said, doesn’t matter a whole lot. You will spend some more money and time learning the TV.

I started with G1000, went to round dials and now it’s a hybrid, sorta
 
I would do the private pilot in the least complex, least expensive airplane option. Fewer distractions from learning the basics of flight. No reason to be paying more for a fancier, bigger airplane when you're trying to learn steep turns, ground reference maneuvers, and landings. Learning to navigate on your cross countries without the fancy avionics. You'll learn the basics of navigation better.

Once you have your Private, it is easy to learn the more advanced avionics as you check out in bigger, more capable airplanes.
 
As a private pilot, you should spend 90% of your time looking out the windscreen. It doesn't matter what's in the panel.
 
For the PPL your instrument equipage is not very important. You will be learning basic skills of aircraft control, navigation, and system management, for which technically advanced panels are not that helpful at best, and could just instill overreliance at worst. For the IR, I would recommend training with what you are going to fly.
 
Steam gauges will be gone soon and your training should include managing a glass panel. There’s no point learning a system that is being phased out. And you can look out the windows just as easily in a g1000 aircraft as any other.
 
  • Like
Reactions: YKA
I did all of my private training in a C150 that was as old as me and had a standard six pack. And I don't think I spent an unusually excessive amount of time looking at the gauges as compared to most other private pilot students of that era. But when I started learning tailwheel a few hundred hours later, I came to learn that I spent way more time watching gauges than I really needed to. When you're VFR, the windshield is your primary gauge. If you know how to read the information presented by the windscreen (and also how to listen to the engine note and how to listen to what the seat is telling your butt), you can tell everything you need to know about pitch, roll and yaw and quite a bit about airspeed without ever glancing at a gauge.

Which is a very round about way of saying you're going to end up looking at the panel far more than you should no matter what kind of panel you learn on. And if you're lucky, you'll eventually realize that when flying VFR, the panel is mostly a secondary instrument to be glanced at only occasionally just to back up what your primary instrument (the windscreen) is telling you.

Train in the plane that's available to you and enjoy the snot out of it.
 
Since steam gauges plane will be cheaper than fancy glass one, get your PP in a steam gauges one. When going for your instrument rating, get it in a glass one. You’ll be comfortable with both, but glass is the future for IFR desirable planes.
 
Sorry, but I find a lot of the replies have very little to do with the actual pilot.
Two critical data points matter.
1. The future is glass, it will take 20 plus years but eventually everything will be glass.
2. Is the OP analog or digital. e.g.. what kind of watch do you have? If you have an analog watch you likely read a dial faster with less mental effort. If you have an Timex than you likely read digital numbers faster.

The reason the second point matters is you need to be able to glance, read and consume information effectively in a few milliseconds and keep your eyes outside. If you are busy translating the number on the dial to useful information, you will end up staring at the panel. Same in reverse for the glass cockpit.

When you consider where society is headed, more and more is headed digital so it is generally easier for an analog to adjust to digital than reverse.

Tim

Sent from my HD1907 using Tapatalk
 
1) Shouldn't matter that much
2) Learn to do both when you can
3) Spend as little as possible on plane rental - glass is going to be expensive
 
I’m in my mid 20’s and learned to fly steam when I was 21. I did a da40 checkout full glass and the panel is what I struggled the most with. Once you know how to fly a plane the principles are the same across the board. Learning how to use and navigate the glass can be done on the ground where it’s safe. Learning to control a plane is impossible on the ground.

Basically, it doesn’t matter what the panel is. Focus on learning to fly and feel things out. Let the airplane speak to you, learn to become one with it and after you’ve smoked the peace pipe with enough hippies, transferring to another plane becomes easy and you can learn whatever the instruments are at that point.

As it sits right now, I’m uncomfortable in a glass plane but the reverse would be true if I trained in glass.
 
What are they charging per hour for that setup? Gonna assume you are paying a top price.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top