As a new flight student I was astounded by the almost unimaginable number of buttons, switches, levers, and instruments installed in the cockpit of the airplane I was issued. That’s probably true for most of us. The basic six-pack in the panel was a bit intimidating at one time.
Looking back on my early years I find a bit of amusement in what I then considered to be an almost overwhelming array of instrumentation and controls. The panels we find in today’s market, even in the smallest trainers, are far more sophisticated.
But that’s the way of innovation. It’s true in every industry. Advancements come into play in almost every product we see. Even the simplest of tools have been improved and their capabilities enhanced.
A trip to the local big box home improvement store will prove this out in short order. Check out the hammer section. Yes, there is a section for hammers. They’ve come far since our grandfather’s time. No longer are these most basic of tools a simple flat weighted head mounted on a wooden stick.
The original is still available. They can be had for as little as $7, plus tax. However, if you’re motivated to obtain the best of the brand you can easily drop a few hundred dollars on the titanium, milled face unit complete with ergonomic handle and lightening holes strategically placed along the length of the handle. The more expensive unit comes in pretty colors, too.
Yay! It’s new. It’s improved. Or is it?
The ads may claim the hammer provides great power and precision, but it’s at least possible the human swinging the tool has more influence on those facets of its use than the tool itself.
When I was training for my instrument rating there was an instrument in the panel known as an Automatic Direction Finder (ADF). Used in combination with a ground based Non-Directional Beacon (NDB) this diabolical needle mounted to a fixed compass card was a primary navigational tool at one time. The challenge of keeping the aircraft upright while attempting to noodle out how to intercept a particular bearing was aggravating beyond my ability to articulate it. The word “miserable” comes to mind.
The needle wavered and wandered wildly. It never seemed to settle down. Throw in a distant thunderstorm or two and we had the added issue of the needle seeking every bolt of lightning the storms produced.
This is where the term “non-precision” made its bones. The ADF could guide you to an AM radio signal produced by an NDB. Or if you weren’t careful it could guide you to a tower broadcasting Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown.
If the ADF/NDB combination got you somewhere in the ballpark of the airport, you were doing well.
For the generation of pilots that came before us, the ADF was a true wonder of science. It was an amazing improvement on the prior system of navigation which involved such advanced techniques as “Fly west until you see the Hudson River. Then turn north but stay east of the mountains until you get past Albany.”
What we see as antiquated technology that we might even consider to be quaint, a prior group of pilots and engineers respected it as being a giant leap forward.
Both groups are right. It depends on where you sit on the timeline and whether that technology represents a step forward or backward from your perspective.
Today, students train in aircraft with fuel-injected engines, glass panel displays, and navigate to within mere feet of their planned route using panel mounted GPS units. The iPad in their laps can verify the information the panel provides. Plus, they can send in a pizza order and arrange for it to be delivered to their destination via an app on their phone. All while in flight.
Pilots today have more information available to them in the cockpit than a collection of systems test engineers could have dreamed of a couple generations ago.
The communication systems available to us today are amazing. We can listen to music via Bluetooth through our noise cancelling headsets, call home to let our family know we’re just half an hour out, and monitor two ATC frequencies simultaneously.
But does any of that make us better pilots? That’s a real question. For all the whiz bang wizardry happening with the technology in our cockpits, has that improved or enhanced the abilities of the human being in the left seat?
Information feeds us and gives us the insights we need to make smart, educated decisions. However, the process of decision-making itself is not managed by machines, or free flowing electrons, or micro-processors hooked up to digital display screens. The most important safety feature in the aircraft sits roughly midway between our ears and just behind our eyes — a unit that has not been significantly altered or improved by technology over the past many thousands of years.
The thought process that allows us to understand all the available information, to make use of it in a meaningful way, and remain safe in the process of managing the aircraft is profoundly personal. The vast majority of the human population has no idea how to interpret that information and put it to good use. That is true no matter how the information is accessed.
The pilot of a low-horsepower homebuilt aircraft with steam gauges and no electrical system faces the same challenges and needs access to the same information as the pilot of a high-end personal transport capable of much greater speed and altitude. Regardless of how they gather that information, from a digital screen or by looking out the window, their ultimate goal is the same: To process that information using the biological system housed in their cranium to make good, safe, practical decisions.
The question then becomes not “what will they think of next?” Technology marches on even if we individually stagnate intellectually. The better question is “what will I think of next and how can I improve on my ability to use the information available to me productively?”
And that’s true for each and every one of us.
