Re: Oz build SS7
The last two posts reflect my thinking exactly. I wish I could have quoted some of both Jim and Ross' comments. I had a great experience with Stick and Rudder on a seven year overdue BFR after our crash, but felt I spent too much time trying to find airspeed and altitude vs. flying by simply looking out the windows and just feeling the airplane with an occasional glance at instruments.
All my instruments are Steam gauges, except for the flashing warning lights on both Low Fuel indicator, and back-up oil pressure indicator. I like the looks of the traditional panel. It somewhat reflects Ross' comment about "I don't like big screen TV's in houses, and certainly not in airplanes". In my opinion, The aesthetics of a traditional panel with the curved glare shield outline has much greater symmetry with round instruments. And needles are more intuitive for my aging brain than light bars. For sure, we all have our personal reasons for doing things and none are bad, but show me a traditional panel and I smile inside. Show me a panel with square things in them and the first thing I think of is $$$$.
To flesh out my thinking on all this. There was an article in Kitplanes a couple of years ago regarding the EGT. They first came out in the mid 70s and the first gauges had five lines on them like an outstretched hand and a needle pointer. No numbers. The instrument was intended to give a relative temperature while leaning at altitude. We had one installed on our Cessna 170B. Then came the numbers. All of a sudden after 60 years of flying we became concerned about the actual temperature of our exhaust. Then the glass panels and the precision to set limits that would trigger alarms. The author's point? Of what real value are the actual numbers.
When I first flew in the Lancair IV I helped build the owner pilot warned me that we might hear some alarms as he had just adjusted some of the limits on his Dynon. As we climbed out, sure enough, the alarms began to shout at us. The alarms alarmed me because I was concerned that he might be ignoring a real issue because he was expecting alarms from an inconsequential issue. As an aside, when I was in the middle of the 2 and a half year build time with him, I was following a Lancair Forum similar to this one and learned that people were dying in these puppies - lose an engine and you were going to do a dead stick at 70 kts if you didn't stall and spin in first - 100 kts on final. One guy did a study of NTSB statistics and found an almost 25% attrition rate with the IV with numerous fatalities. I had set a time frame for when I would consider flying in the airplane and this flight was well under my time/experience limit. The reason for the alarm? We had not reached the minimum engine temperature as established in his adjustment. To this day, I am still trying to understand why he needed to know this number and why it was so important that it needed an alarm.
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