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Electric failure
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nuckollsr(at)cox.net
Guest

Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:24 pm Post subject: Electric failure

At 06:01 PM 7/19/2006 -0500, you wrote:



 	  Quote: 	
		  

<paul.mcallister(at)qia.net>



Hi Bob,



I was wondering if you could clarify your  thinking on this.  Are you

proposing that you would install a pair of these simple devices for a fully

redundant system.  Would this extend to having dual servos as well?



Just curious,



Paul


	


  Absolutely. A few months ago I related the demise of a good friend of

  mine and his golfing buddies in a fatal event over New Mexico. See:



http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles/N79NL.pdf



  This airplane had everything . . . including the kitchen sink. The

  pilot was highly regarded, took all the Flight Safety refreshers,

  keep the airplane up well. He was an engineer and manager of a business

  that delivered LOTS of hardware to GA. He was about as far removed

  from the Sunday afternoon fair weather, occasional instrument pilot

  as you could find.



  Nonetheless, he found himself faced with multiple failures of

  expensive, certified but sadly INTERDEPENDENT systems that wrote

  the script for an upset. After recovery, his abilities as a brass-or-glass

  instrument pilot were severely degraded. In spite of having what

  everyone considers "more than adequate" backup, he lost the airplane

  a second time.



  Sitting amongst attendees at his funeral, I recall thinking that

  for lack of a redundant, totally independent killobuck wing leveler,

  this didn't need to happen. If such a device had been available for

  his airplane, I'm sure he would have installed one. At that time,

  NavAid was the only game in town. Nowadays, theres a old-kid on the

  block with a new game to play. It's called, "How about we never

  need to touch the stick when in the clouds?"



  The bill of materials for an airworthy device is peanuts. Having

  TWO such systems totally independent of each other offers a HUGE

  order of SYSTEM reliability over anything flying today, certified

  or otherwise. The old-kid's product is a tad more expensive than

  I think it needs to be . . . but who am I to bash the business

  model of a very successful designer and honorable supplier to

  the OBAM community? So, rather than bash, it seems more fitting

  that I COMPETE . . .



  But in the mean time, my participation doesn't prevent the

  OBAM community from taking advantage of the opportunities

  in place to help avoid becoming another NTSB statistic.

  The neat thing is that hardware considered "unsuitable" for

  use in N79NL is entirely suited to the task in OBAM aviation

  and available off the shelf right now.



  It just seems the logical way to go. I truly believe my friend Terry

  would agree.



  Bob . . .

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brian

Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 643
Location: Sacramento, California, USA

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:31 pm Post subject: Electric failure

On Jul 19, 2006, at 10:32 PM, Jeffery J. Morgan wrote:



 	  Quote: 	
		   

 <jmorgan(at)compnetconcepts.com>



 Glen and others,



 Actually I was asking more about the training and how closely it would

 match a likely failure of a system.


	


Well, since you mention me by name I guess I get to respond, right? 



I would probably approach it from the systems failure point of view  

first and then train to that. Let's start with the difference between  

flying in visual and instrument meteorological conditions. If you are  

VFR, the engine is running and you can make power changes, and the  

primary flight controls are working, you don't have an immediate  

problem. Fly someplace and land. Sort it out on the ground. If you  

think about it, you don't need anything in your instrument panel to  

work in order to safely fly to a good landing spot and land. You  

don't need radios, gyros, or pitot-static instruments. So if you are  

a VFR-only pilot, a lot of the redundancy and no-single-point-of- 

failure stuff we talk about here is superfluous. The only exception I  

see is if you need electrical power to keep your engine running.



If you are getting ready to yell at me about how you need your  

airspeed and altimeter instruments, I have an example that suggests  

otherwise. I have a student who had an annoying habit of getting head- 

down in the cockpit worrying about being on altitude and on airspeed.  

He got to where he was chasing the airspeed instead of flying by  

reference to the external horizon. I solved his problem by covering  

the ASI and altimeter and making him fly the whole lesson with them  

covered. He quickly discovered that he could use trim and power  

presets (known settings) to get the airplane to perform the way he  

wanted. He discovered the he could hear and feel the short-term  

airspeed variations. In short, he didn't need those instruments. The  

result is that he felt more comfortable leaving his head out and just  

flying the airplane.



So, if you are a VFR pilot in a VFR airplane, you just don't need to  

worry about things that much.



Now the pilot with the advanced IFR aircraft who plans to fly in IMC  

is a different story. Now you become dependent on those things in the  

panel in order to safely complete a flight and get on the ground.



I thought Bob's story was rather telling. Here was a guy who had the  

training and had redundant systems but still managed to kill himself  

and his passengers. What went wrong? My guess is that, when presented  

with conflicting information from both working and failed  

instruments, he found it impossible to determine what the airplane  

was doing so he proceeded to make things worse. That he managed to  

get the airplane into a loop and/or a roll just boggles my mind. I  

have to think that, had he pulled the throttle to idle, dropped the  

gear, let go of the yoke, and used the rudder pedals to stop the  

aircraft's rotation, he probably would have survived.



Now we have to assume that, unless he had a trim runaway, the  

airplane was trimmed for level flight. If he didn't put in any pitch  

commands the airplane would continue to seek its trim airspeed.  

Dropping the gear and pulling the throttle to idle was just a way to  

get the airplane to descend without gaining a lot of extra speed and  

to control speed after he lost it. (Besides, part of standard spin  

recovery is "power to idle".) Now if he was spinning using the  

rudders to stop the rotation would have stopped the spin. At that  

point the airplane would have righted itself and sought its trim  

airspeed again.



But this thread started out with what fails and what to do about it.  

The increased capability of advanced avionics tends to turn us into  

systems managers, not pilots. If you think about someone depending on  

their primary flight display (PFD), i.e. the thing that displays your  

whole six-pack in one display (as opposed to the multi-function  

display that displays moving map, wether, traffic, etc.) and then how  

they react when it goes blank on them, you can see why the FAA might  

be concerned.



We are putting more and more emphasis on fewer devices, more complex  

devices. All our eggs are in one basket so to speak. When the basket  

falls we have quite a mess. What do you do?



You know, one of the things I would do is work with a CFI to develop  

a scenario-based education program for MY airplane. Jeff, you made an  

interesting point about a CFI who won't use the devices in the panel  

and won't talk to ATC. You don't want that CFI to help you in this  

case. You want one who will sit in your cockpit, learn its  

capabilities, and then do the, "what if this thing here failed,"  

scenario. He might not even know the answer but will work with you to  

find the answer and then work with you to train up on it until you  

can deal with that scenario. Then you write it down and it becomes  

part of your system failure checklist. It is a lot easier to think  

about that stuff on the ground than when you are in IMC conditions  

with moderate turbulence.



As for your nearest facility/frequency function, I have that in my  

Apollo GX-60. Pretty spiffy. I hit the "nearest" button; select  

airport, VOR, or NDB; then scroll through the facilities starting  

with the nearest. If I press the "info" button all the information is  

there -- frequencies, runway heading and length, etc. It is even fed  

into my SL-30 so the VOR frequencies are right there. Select, dial,  

enter. (Those are the actual keystrokes.) Pretty neat.



Even though I know how, I almost never use it.



I don't use it because it doesn't help my situational awareness.  

Looking at a chart helps my situational awareness because it is a  

much better integration of information. Faster access too. I  

immediately see where I am and my relationship to all the facilities  

around me. Freqs are there too. Selection is easy.



Now if they somehow managed to combine a touch-screen with the VOR  

receiver maybe that would work for me. Touch the VOR receiver and  

then touch the station on the moving map. POOF! VOR receiver  

channelized and the OBS spins to center the needle. That might work.  

Same with comm. (But how do you tell it you want tower, ATIS,  

approach, or ground?)



Getting on to redundancy. I think my Aztec panel is a good study in  

this. I got a bunch of new Apollo gear to put in my CJ6A project.  

(GX-60 GPS/comm, SL-30 Nav-Com, SL-70 xpdr, SL-15 audio panel, Sandel  

EHSI) Then I got to thinking about how often I planned to fly hard  

IFR in my CJ6A. How about "never". It seemed like all that wonderful  

gear would go to waste there. So I put it in my Aztec. Quite a nice  

panel.



But I did one other thing too. I kept the old KNS-80 RNAV (VOR/ILS/ 

DME/RNAV). I gave it its own dedicated indicator. These were isolated  

from everything else in the panel. I know that if my super-whizzy  

stuff goes TU, the KNS-80 and its antiquated cross-needle VOR/LOC/GS  

indicator will let me navigate to my destination and then shoot an  

approach, including an ILS.



I also kept the old vacuum-driven heading indicator (DG). (Old Bob --  

it has a needle-ball, not a TC.) When I am feeling a bit less poor I  

will try to talk the FSDO into letting me put a Dynon D10. I don't  

plan to replace anything, just have the Dynon there. If the Dynon  

fails I will fly the old six-pack.



Going back and reading this (it is already after midnight and my  

brain quit an hour ago) I see I rambled all over. Oh well. Hopefully  

it will spark some thinking about this. I know I spend entirely too  

much time thinking about this.



Brian Lloyd                         361 Catterline Way

brian-yak AT lloyd DOT com          Folsom, CA 95630

+1.916.367.2131 (voice)             +1.270.912.0788 (fax)



I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . .

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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_________________
Brian Lloyd
brian-yak at lloyd dot com
+1.916.367.2131 (voice) +1.270.912.0788 (fax)

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . .
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

morgjj

Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 24

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject: Electric failure

Maybe...But it is good food for thought, I appreciate the feedback/suggestions!



Jeff 



--

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Tim(at)MyRV10.com
Guest

Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:19 am Post subject: Electric failure

Jeff, I don't know if I showed you much of this on the

demo flight, but that chelton system does all of this, and

very well.  Hit NRST, and the you can choose from a whole

long list of things, so you've always got the nearest

frequencies, airports, VOR's, WX, and much more, just on

a quick button push.  Very neat stuff.



Tim Olson - RV-10 N104CD - Flying

do not archive

Jeffery J. Morgan wrote:

 	  Quote: 	
		   

 

 As for some of the points I have read over the past few days, I think

 that there is merit in many of them. I think we could discuss all of

 them at length.  The interfaces on the systems are very different, each

 with strong points and weak points. I think that I have often thought is

 that the radio should have the closest frequencies in a list off the

 tuning button as I fly along.  I think it would be great to punch a

 button and have a list of the closest ATIS or AWOS stations from my

 position with a distance and bearing. Same for VORs.  On the Garmin's

 you can go to the nearest page and select, but it is a lot of dialing to

 get there. With VOR's it isn't like I am going to dial much else in the

 NAV radio.  If I were 5000' or less, a list of airport CTAF or ATC

 controlling facilities on the standby list would be helpful too.

 Imagine hitting a button on the radio, and scroll though a list with the

 frequency, definition, and direction right on the screen, with the

 closest ones first...  There is a feature that would lighten pilot loads

 in difficult times.  But all that said, maybe Brian would want it

 differently than that.  Never would claim that I am normal by any means.

 I am building an airplane after all.

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