Flying the Rotor

[NoWingsAttached]

I have "put a bag" over my instrument panel, and find that flying w/o ANY instrumentation is a really good way to get in touch with my machine. It was a really great way to force myself to wean off the AS, tachs, ALT, heat, etc. and take off, fly, and land literally by the seat of my pants.

Who needs all those gizmos and gadgets??? No one should, but there is something else: I LIKE all that stuff. I LIKE to know temps, AS, ALT, RPM, RRPM, direction, and (with a little hand-held GPS velcroed to the dash) rate of climb, and ground speed (plus wind speed, as you add/subtract AS). IT IS FUN! and it DOES help make me a safer, better pilot when used in context and still feeling the gyro all the while.

A rotor tach is TEN times TEN better info than merely watching the blades spin up and blur, there is SOOOO much more you can and should know from rotor speed during many, many phases of flight - from prerotate to engine off - that you cant' possibly delineate from what you see from the seat just looking up etc.

Gauges and read-outs are GOOD. A little flying time with a bag over their heads is also a good thing, from time-to-time, to keep the pilot "tuned-up".

[gyronutjoe]

How about a dual display, Digital/analog, both at the same time?

[WHY]

"flying the rotor" makes sense to me, if you got your hand on the "pulse" of the rotor, you got your hand on it"s "heart"

Tony

[Penguin]

Bag goes over the instruments, not over your head.
I need to remember that part.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by Penguin

Bag goes over the instruments, not over your head.
I need to remember that part.

If your flying with a potential crazy girlfriend you would put a bag over her head and carry an extra bag for yourself incase hers comes off.

[WaspAir]

Originally Posted by gyronutjoe

How about a dual display, Digital/analog, both at the same time?

Here's a blended display, part analog, part digital:

[birdy]

A rotor tach is TEN times TEN better info than merely watching the blades spin up and blur, there is SOOOO much more you can and should know from rotor speed during many, many phases of flight - from prerotate to engine off - that you cant' possibly delineate from what you see from the seat just looking up etc.

The ferels never had a rotor tac. [ and with all the short TOs, iv never flaped the blades]

Hell, it dont even hava ASI.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by birdy

A rotor tach is TEN times TEN better info than merely watching the blades spin up and blur, there is SOOOO much more you can and should know from rotor speed during many, many phases of flight - from prerotate to engine off - that you cant' possibly delineate from what you see from the seat just looking up etc.

The ferels never had a rotor tac. [ and with all the short TOs, iv never flaped the blades]

Hell, it dont even hava ASI.

Only instrument I use is a hall effect asi. I like it cause it tells me my bestrateof climb airspeed which happens to be 35 MPH. :-)

[Ronnie328]

Originally Posted by WaspAir

No tender toes here. We can all deal with data; that's not the issue. But if you're suggesting that a few thousand misspent hours of Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed makes you able to compute trend and rate from a single digital display of a changing value as fast and efficiently as you could discern it with an analog display of the same information, I'll simply choose not to believe you, and to believe what the behavioral research shows instead. It's a human factors design issue, not a generational difference. Doddering old fart or feckless newbie, we're all better at picking up more information faster from an analog presentation. That's why modern glass panel displays include a vertical "tape" on the sides instead of just a single number for airspeed or altitude. The tape provides the analog benefit that you wouldn't get if the panel displayed the bare number alone.

Honestly, I wouldn't know about Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. All i can tell you is I see analog things every where and wish they were digital. I'm just a weird sort of guy that doesn't need to see mercury in the glass to know 100 degrees is hot *shrugs*

[StanFoster]

wrong thread....I will delete