smugglersblues

Go w/ the Glass.

I'm old school and although steam has it's purist supporters, I recognize when "out with the old and in with the new" is taking place---and like it or not that's what is happening---go with it. We had the same debate when Sperry invented the attitude gyro. The flat panel is going in everything. get over it.

wrxpilot

Unless you've actually spent time training and transitioning people that have only flown "glass" to analog, that is extremely bad advice. It is a considerably different situation than when "Sperry invented the attitude gyro" or when NDBs/VORs replaced the A-N range.

I see the advantages of both glass and analog, and I have a type rating in an all glass jet so I'm not exactly a purist supporter. But there's just no denying that pilots who flew analog during their formative years typically have a better picture in their head of what's going on, and are much more adaptable to different types of instrumentation.

There is absolutely no advantage to training glass early in the training sequence, and it is considerably more expensive as well.

HercDriver130

personally I would do it with the old steam gauge 172. You are still getting the benefit of the garmin 430 for nav capability.... and it would suck if a few years down the road the first job you get offered is sitting in the right seat of a Falcon 20 hauling freight and you screw in training because you have never had any experience flying with a traditional scan. My personal experience has been that its been easier for me to transition to full glass aircraft than vice versa....ymmv.

Mr Immlemann

Well, just had the first instrument lesson (after not flying for 8 months) in the steam, and I have to say, MY HEAD IS KILLIN ME. Staring down at those gauges for an hour in the bumps is quite interesting, but overall I enjoyed it and cant wait for the next lesson. We did basic stuff under the hood--constant speed climbs/descents, slow flight, app/dep stalls, standard rate turns, recovery from unusual attitudes...went pretty well, but damn I gotta shake the rust off.

As far as the decision to fly the steam or the glass, I'll stay with the steam after I really thought about this flight and realized how important an efficient scan can be for instrument flying. I caught myself numerous times fixating on the Airspeed Indi/Att Indi and man did changes happen quick if I stuck on one instrument for too long. I can definitely see how flying the 1000 would make a scan unnecessary as all of the information is providing in a neat little package.

Thanks for the insight, and I'll be back on this page with my experiences and questions on my instrument training as they come. Now its time to STUDY, STUDY, STUDY....

USMCFLYR

Don't believe that a glass cockpit doesn't require a scan.
Matter of fact, one thing all that glass is good at doing is portraying more information than your brain could possibly process at one time.
Glass requires some SERIOUS scanning, it is just different and once you LEARN to process what you need to know and when you need it - there is an amazing amount of SA available to you.

USMCFLYR

Cubdriver

All that is true USMC, but the crudity and imprecision of traditional steam instruments makes them a better way for primary students to build skills. The main thing a G1000 panel helps is situational awareness because the pilot has to do less mental work to gather the necessary information with the system. But it is better to go from difficult to easy as far as cockpit systems go. An exception might be as Noy mentioned the rich pilot who has no purpose than to fly a glass cockpit airplane. Pro pilots need to be grounded in all the typical systems and steam gauges are here to stay.

NTSB, FAA and AOPA Air Safety Foundation have found that glass panel GA accident rates are on the rise but they do not know precisely why. Pilot skills would seem to be weakened using only the glass panels for currency training. It is a phenomenon that is poorly understood so far, but I think the prevailing wisdom is that glass leads to a mentally lazy pilot and a loss of IFR skills. I am hired sometimes to babysit a rich fellow with a shiny new Turbo Skylane. He can barely manage it, gets lost and has to have some help. The saving grace is he knows he is weak in glass panel skills and he hires me to ride along. It is money well spent because he does not have the basic airmanship to operate glass systems. It's too much panel and it has too many tricks. A steam panel would help him develop awareness and skills. This is the crux of the glass versus steam conundrum in my view- that steam builds skills while the record shows it also yields higher safety numbers. It would seem having to use cruder instruments is actually good for GA pilots.

Bellanca

I would go with the six pack. The school that I did my instrument at had a G1000 instrument rating option, and every person (granted this was only a handful of people) who I knew that did theirs in a G1000 struggled getting their scan down, situational awareness, staying ahead of the plane, etc for things like their single engine approach in the multi, or if they wanted to have an option of taking a normal 172 into actual in the event that both G1000's were in mx or checked out already.

In my opinion, you should get some G1000 time when you're building hours for commercial, its worth getting familiar with glass cockpits, but unless you're at an all glass school and going to teach in glass and have an all-glass career, you need to know how to handle a plane with a six pack. I'd say that the vast majority of planes in flight training, small cargo and charter operations use a standard 6 pack, at best they might have a partial glass panel for the AI/flight director and HSI. I would think having 10-15 hours in a G1000 is plenty to meet the 'we prefer a candidate familiar with/has experience in G1000's' that you occasionally see in CFI job postings.

I think I got about 6 hours in G1000's when I was working on my commercial, and so far it has been plenty to transition to planes with glass and partial glass cockpits. The pfd/instrument panel of the G1000 is the only thing that is really standard from one glass cockpit to another. IMO, It is really intuitive and takes a relatively short amount of time to get used to. I personally think the hard part is knowing what all of the buttons do, how to program it to make it do what you want to do, be able to navigate through all of the pages and options, etc. The programming part of glass cockpits varies a lot and you will need to be familiar with the one in that type of plane you are going to fly and just because you know a G1000 inside and out and have a bunch of hours in the G1000 may not really mean that much when transitioning into different planes with different avionics packages.

Mr Immlemann

Your right. Flying both the glass and steam most definitely does require some sort of scan, just a different method for each. Just a matter of viewing tapes vs round dial. Basically from what Im gathering is each has its own advantages and disadvantages but for now Im going to fly analog. The last thing I want is to just learn how to be a button pusher and not a pilot. I would rather focus on flying then waste time learning the ten million things the G1000 can do. My instructor knows this and recommended I fly the steam anyways. Maybe when I get enough experience Ill transition into the 1000.

The other idea I was tossing around was doing the instrument-comm-multi at the same time in a seneca starting now. But thats a whole different story and would most likely cause bankruptcy at 21 years old (not what I want, but I would have great multi time). I must not have my head screwed on tight enough lol.

bcrosier

Call me old school if you'd like, but I say absolutely do the basic IFR with the six-pack.

I'll pretty much echo the sentiments of all of the others who say do it that way as well. You WILL develop better SA being forced to mentally picture what's going on with the six-pack vs. the glass. This will benefit you down the road.

The ugly truth that hasn't been mentioned so far is this - glass will lie to you. It's like any other computer: garbage in, garbage out. If you inadvertently program something wrong, it will happily guide you with great precision to where you never wanted to go. My last two aircraft have been glass, and I also flew the 757 with glass ADI/HSI. The policy at both carriers I've flown for has been that raw data (non FMS generated information) must be used for non-RNAV departures, arrivals, and approaches. Why? Because it's possible for all of the magic to be FUBAR. Yes, the raw data was still displayed on "glass" instruments, but the interpretation skill necessary to use that info go straight back to a basic RMI/HSI, which in turn goes further back to a simple CDI and bearing pointer. Learn to use that first (Law of Primacy), and you'll have a good foundation to draw on the rest of your career.

Even for enroute and RNAV ops, the innate ability to maintain a mental image of where you are and what's going on is invaluable. I've had this discussion with numerous instructors and check airmen (I am neither, just a line puke), the the virtually unanimous consensus is that individuals with primarily glass time are generally weaker and more difficult to train than those with extensive experience with more basic instrument systems.

As has been said, the transition from six-pack to glass is fairly easy. Taking advantage of the huge amount of information presented on glass is challenging, but I think that is easier to do (and comes with experience with a particular system) than it is to try and develop good SA later.

The real key element to transitioning to more complex avionics is mastering the FMS system. Having the G-430 should provide a good introduction to GPS/RNAV systems, so that when you do transition to the G-1000 you're really focused on learning the G-1000, not the G-1000 plus how to utilize GPS.

Now my after the fact disclaimer: I haven't flown GA in a number of years, and have never flown a G-1000 aircraft - so my knowledge of these is admittedly very limited. That said, I've flown and and typed on both airliners and business jets with both six-packs and full glass suites - so I think I have some understanding of the challenges and advantages to each.

Good luck to you in your instrument training! It's a challenging rating, but a very rewarding one as well. Even more than the commercial (at least in my mind, if you pursue it with the proper attitude), it truly is the gateway to becoming a professional aviator.

pilot1278

Bmart said it best - it's all about situational awareness and if I may add, safety. Should that Garmin ever fail, would you be able to still fly the plane using the 3 standard steam gauges provided for you? I can't tell you how many pilots I know who are totally reliant on their Garmins. No joke, I heard a group of them on the air to air freq the other day unable to locate an airport because it wasn't in "the database". That is really sad.

I recommend 6 pack and then transitioning to G-1000.