"Children of the Magenta"

[Murmur 3,941]

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/GPS/Johnson_Shea_Holloway_GPS.pdf

[Johan_Dees 84]

On the flightsim side.. I looked at youtube for VATSIM vid's, and was stunned that 99% are Magenta Kids, just a few were doing a old style VOR-DME.

Maybe its to much a burden when flying online, but moving maps, FMC's and such are the thing.

 

Personally, I find them boring in the sim. (not in real life!) and like the difficulty added with old school stuff.. hence calclassic.com

[LAdamson 240]

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/GPS/Johnson_Shea_Holloway_GPS.pdf

Principally U.K. authors. The U.K. was far behind the US, in regards to GPS. Examples such as WAAS, etc. Most references are over ten years old, with the most current over eight years old. 

On the flightsim side.. I looked at youtube for VATSIM vid's, and was stunned that 99% are Magenta Kids, just a few were doing a old style VOR-DME.

Maybe its to much a burden when flying online, but moving maps, FMC's and such are the thing.

 

Personally, I find them boring in the sim. (not in real life!) and like the difficulty added with old school stuff.. hence calclassic.com

I too,hardly ever use GPS for flight simulation. Most of my flights are GA mountain areas. 

[Johan_Dees 84]

Me too.

I like to plan carefully, and with an old DC3 or DC4 backdated in the old days I like te added thrill and fear to see if I can make it to the destination as planned.

Of course, in the sim with FSATC it is straight on. I dont yet tried with VATSIM, I think I need a copilot because of the unpredictability in ATC, they might send you to FMC intersections I cannot cope with... brrr... the horror! the horror!

[Ramjett 27]

For a real thrill I drag out my Connie and the Bubble Sextant addon available here at AVSIM and do celestial nav.  What a hoot!

 

Randy

[Johan_Dees 84]

YES.. I don dare to to that, but it must be an awesome flight when it works out.

Or you crash in the ocean..

 

[Oracle427 45]

Larry, you missed the point of the video if you think it is showing out against GPS or against using automation.

 

The video talks about how one must recognize when indirectly flying the airplane and trying to command the automation to do things that can be done more rapidly and safely using lower levels of automation or no automation at all.

 

The point in the video where they talk about switching runways and intercepting the new approach path is a perfect example of this. Why waste time trying to load all the new data into the navigation system when you can get on course and then engage the automation to take over? Why risk blowing past the final course?

 

How about the situation where a midair was about the happen and the pilot could only worry about dialing in new inputs into the autopilot instead of simply briefly hand flying out of the way of the traffic?

 

Automation is great, but it can't read minds, can't respond to ATC, it takes time to program and can be programmed incorrectly. That is the point of the video.

[z06z33 763]

Nothing wrong with a GPS,but what happen if your electrical system fails? You get a short in the wires that run to the GPS and you have to pull the breaker so it doesn't start a fire. The unit itself fails. You hit a bird and loose the antenna and about a million other things that could go wrong. Do I use GPS in my real world flying? Yes, but I back it up by knowing where I am on a sectional,and use my VORs to triangulate my position to back that up. Doing these things keeps you on your toes and if somthing goes wrong you know exactly where you are.

The other day I picked up the coolsky Dc-9 and it has no GPS or FMC I used VORS to get to my destination and it way really fun and broke up the monotony of cruise. If I fly the NGX or 777 I usually hand fly to cruise then pop the autopilot on and go do something else around the house till TOD.

[LAdamson 240]

Larry, you missed the point of the video if you think it is showing out against GPS or against using automation.

 

The video talks about how one must recognize when indirectly flying the airplane and trying to command the automation to do things that can be done more rapidly and safely using lower levels of automation or no automation at all.

 

The point in the video where they talk about switching runways and intercepting the new approach path is a perfect example of this. Why waste time trying to load all the new data into the navigation system when you can get on course and then engage the automation to take over? Why risk blowing past the final course?

 

How about the situation where a midair was about the happen and the pilot could only worry about dialing in new inputs into the autopilot instead of simply briefly hand flying out of the way of the traffic?

 

Automation is great, but it can't read minds, can't respond to ATC, it takes time to program and can be programmed incorrectly. That is the point of the video.

I didn't miss the point. The video was a direct result of the AA 757 flight into terrain crash, in Cali, Columbia.  As I've said, for the most part, commercial airline GPS was in it's infancy, when the video was produced. At that time, GPS with terrain avoidance databases didn't even exist. The space shuttle did the terrain mapping in the year 2000.  Due to certification, panel mount GPS's were years behind portables. When the Garmin 430/530s became popular for smaller aircraft, they had already been surpassed by the handheld Garmin 296. It had a lot more computing power, and much better resolution. 

 

Point still is....................the video was referred to all time, when it came to flight instructors, as well as flight simmers, when they wanted to make a point, about automation supposeably being somewhat inferior to the time tested basic airman skills. In fact, I was once told, that if I wasn't firing up my OBSs before every cross country..............then I didn't have a right to fly.  Problem was, I hadn't wasted thousands of dollars, to even install Nav radios in my airplane.  I certainly wasn't alone. I knew many airline and military pilots, who also didn't spend thousands to install NAV's in their experimental category aircraft.  As it turns out, my prior aircraft now has a glass panel that includes NAV radios. It's set up for IFR, and owned/flown by a retired 777 pilot.

 

FWIW -- I did have a portable NAV/COMM radio, in addition to two terrain mapping GPS's, which were connected to the airplanes electrical system, as well as having backup batteries. We're also close to 15 years, since a Boeing 737 pilot friend of mine..........has had any issues with momentary GPS loss. The 737-800 that he flies, uses GPS as the main nav system,.