nuckolls.bob(at)aeroelect
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 Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:27 pm Post subject: More FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)? |
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At 07:27 PM 8/11/2011, you wrote:
"If you have a fuse/breaker/switch system,
you know where every part comes from and what
spares will cost you for repairs. If the VP
system gets a cold, your airplane is down
while the factory repairs it. It uses software
you didn't write, parts you didn't buy and
couldn't replace even if you had them . . .
'cause you don't understand it. "
The VP system tells you exactly and precisely what
device/avionics/electronic is surging, overloading, shorting,
etc. Much more information than a fuse or breaker provides.
In 45 years of working in general aviation and in 25 years
as a pilot, I've never felt the need for knowing such things
in flight . . .
Great system for monitoring, tweaking, and measuring. Never heard of
a VP system going back to the factory, but I suppose it happens.
If you are curious about such things, you can easily
monitor/measure any number of parameters of interest
with commercial off-the-shelf data acquisition systems
that are not integral to the power distribution system.
But believe me, after pouring over a hundred hours
of data where "nothing is happening" I think
you'll find other more interesting things to do
with your time.
You're worrying about things that are first rare
and secondly do not represent a hazard to flight.
What do you do when a radio/EFIS/autopilot goes bad if you don't send
it back to the factory? Or maybe modern electronics violates your
principle of why we choose to build our own plane? You must be
flying with analogue/vacuum gauges.
The airplane does not fall out of the sky when a
radio quits, nor should it fall out of the sky
if some article of power distribution equipment
quits.
That's what failure mode effects analysis and
Plan-B is all about. You reposition a couple of
switches and continue flight to a comfortable arrival
. . . and it doesn't take one byte of software
to do it. We were doing it decades before glass
screens and micro-controllers came along.
It's easy to get enamored of doing a thing simply
because it can be done. Just tonight I had to
struggle through the magic panel on a new radio
in my truck. All I ever wanted was on-off, band,
tune and volume. But this thing stores a qazillion
frequencies, five channels of two bands, plays
flash drives, plays CDs and has an aux audio input
with half octave equalizers and features I can't even
name much less tell you what they do for me. Hat
dancing over the array of 20 buttons will, no doubt,
do some whippy things.
It took me more than a minute to get my grandson's
favorite radio station located and on speakers.
I think your electrical system is a similar situation
with exceedingly simple design goals that do not get
'better cause you can do more'.
Bob . . .
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