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rv6ejguy

Well Known Member
I read an interesting stat in Aviation Week a few days ago. The NTSB compiled stats for fatal and non-fatal accidents on aircraft equipped with conventional and glass instrumentation.

The non-fatal rate was lower on glass equipped aircraft but the fatal rate was more than double!

Thoughts on this?
 
I have a brand new airplane with brand new glass. I went up to do steep turns. What I found was information overload. What I wanted was a simple attitude indicator for VFR maneuvers. The HSI, flight director, flight path marker, were all getting in the way. What I did was to turn them all off to end up with the simple attitude indicator with airspeed and altitude tapes. All of the other bells and whistles are great, I am just not ready for them. I will incorporate them back in, one at a time, as I feel comfortable.
 
Didn't they include different types of flying in this study, that pretty much invalidated all findings as far as I'm concerned... Maybe the only finding that was worth mentioning was that glass-cockpit planes usually fly longer cross-countries than the non-glass stuff...

So, different types of flying will have different types of risk.

Comparing a landing accident in a C-172 (non-glass) to an icing encounter in a Cirrus is hardly apples-to-apples and in most of these cases having (or not having) glass made absolutely no difference... so why include it or try to compare it?
 
There's good reason in the commercial flying business the glass is often referred to as a "heads down display". Information overload can take your brain hostage just like texting while driving.

My personal opinion is that often times it takes a more experienced pilot to effectively utilize the information density presented. During critical phases of flight HDD time should be kept to the absolute minimum.
 
Without qualifying the statistics they're as invalid as saying "More people die wearing tan pants than those wearing black pants".
 
Risk Management

When I was in grad school we did some projects involving risk management in TAA (Technologically Advanced Aircraft, or glass cockpit light aircraft). Does the improved technology ("smart" autopilot, synthetic vision, wx, traffic, BRS, etc) induce pilots into believing they can handle riskier weather and other situations? Is it because many personality traits that lead to success in a career (and therefore the financial means to purchase a new glass-cockpit aircraft) may also contribute to the dreaded Hazardous Attitudes in small-aircraft decision making? :confused: Lots of academics wonder why this happens because all this technology is designed to reduce workload and improve situational awareness.
 
I remember that during the Viet Nam war, when fighter jets were first getting fancy computer driven geewhisbang stuff like HUDs, that many pilots were complaining of information overload, and too much info in the HUD.

I chose to put in separate Ray Allen trim, and flap position indicators in the panel, and NOT use the internal indicators in my PFD unit just for this reason. The PFD units still seem cluttered with too much stuff as it is.

My $0.02
 
Lots of good comments here already - especially the fact that without a whole lot more qualification and categorization, the statistics are pretty meaningless. However, something alluded to by many (overload on early flights with new glass....) is the lack of formal training. Folks get in an d go, find themselves head down and overloaded - but they never did anything to train beforehand. Military and Airline flying has very strict (and pedantic) training - in GA, you can hope in and go. If you've never flown behind glass, do you want your first time to be the first flight in a new airplane?

I doubt many of the fatals are occurring during Phase 1 due to glass, but nevertheless, it is something to think about.

Paul
 
Ironflight said:
---something alluded to by many (overload on early flights with new glass....) is the lack of formal training. Folks get in and go, find themselves head down and overloaded -
Click to expand...

Formal training for experimental glass panel:confused:

I have been pouring over the GRT manuels now for some time, and as far as I am concerned, they are for techies, not "normal folks" like me:rolleyes:----

Unfortunately for me, the only local guy really familiar with the GRT stuff moved away last year.

Ironflight said:
If you've never flown behind glass, do you want your first time to be the first flight in a new airplane? Paul
Click to expand...

This is one of the issues I am working on right now-----also why I installed a set of round gauges.
 
I think it's all relative. What I would like to see in those numbers is the history of the pilot involved. How much experience did they have behind the glass? Were they a recent transistion from steam? How many hours did they have? Had they been glass their entire "career?"

Personally I've gone both ways on the equipment. Knowing where the info is and what it's telling me from the 4 displays in an F-18 after 1000+ hours I'm fine. Jumping in an F-5 which is a shot gun of all steam gauges, I find myself heads down much more often (with low hours in the jet) trying to figure out what everything is telling me. When I first started flying behind glass after 1000's of hours behind steam gauges, the MFD's were information over load, especially just trying to configure them to tell me what I needed at the particular time I needed it. Not a good place to be in the terminal phase of flight in IMC.

It all comes back to AVIATE, NAVIGATE, COMMUNICATE. That, and be honest with yourself with regards to your own limitations and familiarity with the equipment. There is a good reason commercial operators put limitations on pilots that are new to a particular jet, approach minimums, number of approaches, etc before they're allowed to fully excersise the capabilities of their jet. How many of those glass accidents were guys that jumped right in and blasted off into IMC? I can take one jet to 200 and a half with complete confidence, and another I'll limit myself to day VFR for a long time before I try anything more challenging, and potentially dangerous.

That said, I plan on putting every inch of glass in my RV that I can afford, with every bell and whistle. I'll then use a step down approach for my personal mimums from day VFR, to night VFR, to day IMC, to night IMC... gradually decreasing my personal weather mimimums over a few hundred hours.
 
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My experience

183.jpg

I did first flight on my RV-7 just a few months ago (Dec 2009). I built my panel with the Dynon 7" EFIS D-100 and the Dynon EMS D-10A. Additionally, I built in the basic steam gauges (Alt, ASI, and VSI) as backup.

Prior to first flight, I have never flown with a glass panel.

I found that I used the steam gauges for 90% of my flight information. I wasn't able to find the airspeed and altitude at a glance quick enough on my Dynon. This may not be a big deal during most phases of flight, but it was a really big deal when I was doing first flights on an unfamiliar and much faster plane than I had ever flown previously. The entire landing pattern requires speed and altitude management while keeping eyes outside of the cockpit.

This isn't to say that the Dynon or other glass cockpits are necessarily bad. I now have 150 hrs on my RV-7, and I'm using the Dynon information more consistently. There are still some maneuvers in which I revert to the round gauges.
 
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Training

Ironflight said:
However, something alluded to by many (overload on early flights with new glass....) is the lack of formal training. Folks get in an d go, find themselves head down and overloaded - but they never did anything to train beforehand. Military and Airline flying has very strict (and pedantic) training - in GA, you can hope in and go. If you've never flown behind glass, do you want your first time to be the first flight in a new airplane?

I doubt many of the fatals are occurring during Phase 1 due to glass, but nevertheless, it is something to think about.

Paul
Click to expand...

I experienced this from the airline level when we transitioned from analog flight directors (essentially a steam 6-pack) to glass aircraft. The classroom training was thorough, and the simulator training well presented, but we had a substantial failure rate. And this from current, 5 to 20 thousand hour ATPs. The learning curve to glass is very steep. The added problem, as Mike pointed out, is that the complete lack of standardization on configuration and layout makes training difficult at best.

John Clark ATP, CFI
FAA FAAST Team Member
EAA Flight Advisor
RV8 N18U "Sunshine"
KSBA
 
Another thought

Fatality rates during forced landings are directly proportional to the stall speed of the aircraft. I suspect that glass cockpits are installed in higher speed aircraft. And maybe aircraft designed for IFR/IMC.

Could be a factor, anyway.
 
Mike S said:
Formal training for experimental glass panel:confused:

I have been pouring over the GRT manuels now for some time, and as far as I am concerned, they are for techies, not "normal folks" like me. . .
Click to expand...
Exactly my situation right now Mike!

In fact Paul, I have come close to sending you a PM to ask some specific questions about my GRT setup as I knew you are flying behind these instruments. I have not done so as I did not want to burden you with the notion of attempting to train a pilot behind a panel setup (my airplane configuration) you know little, if anything, about. Having said that I would love to find someone who has experience with these instruments to "pick their brain".

I could really benefit from some training. And I really feel that my training needs to be multi-faceted. Since I am now in Phase I flying I am spending a great deal of time trying to figure out how to use the data I am getting from my GRT setup. I have learned a great deal already from just trial and error while flying. However, many of the things I have been able to figure out have come from me pushing a button to see what happens. I really think there could be a better way for me, as a pilot, to understand the use of these systems than trial and error and just using my own analytical skills the best I can while flying alone at 6000'.

Lest someone think otherwise, yes I have read the manuals (all of them) many times over! I find myself going back over and over again to the "USERS GUIDE AND REFERENCE". I now fly with it so I can try to flip to a page that will help me with the issue at hand as they come up. But there is a great deal of knowledge not being conveyed in the manuals.

Just as important as using the instruments for flight is the struggle I am having with the configuration of each parameter and setting for the multitude of readouts on these displays. It is a huge struggle for me. And I do work in the computer world so I feel I have a little bit of head start on my knowledge base for these instruments. At present I am struggling with getting the fuel flow readout to accurately display my fuel burn. I deem this particular readout the most important information for me when flying X-country. I want to be able to rely on a fuel instrument readout when I have been flying for 3+ hours. I do not want to find myself close to landing and hearing an engine sputter because I miscalculated the fuel burn in some way.

I am really progressing backwards from a builder's perspective in this discussion because the installation was a struggle also. Although there is a great deal of information available from GRT, it is very technical and one has to really study and analyze these instructions with a technical eye. I think GRT does a pretty good job with the installation information in general but the builder definitely needs to really understand the interactions of all the components involved with the installation of these units.

Well, I had no intentions of hijacking this thread from the original topic. My apologies for doing so. I just felt Mike was dead on with the very problem I am having with my glass panel. I do think some form of training for pilots prior to taking off with their new glass panel in their newly built airplane would be a very good thing. No doubt it would improve safety for those flying behind these instruments.

Live Long and Prosper!
 
Sig600 said:
I can take one jet to 200 and a half with complete confidence, and another I'll limit myself to day VFR for a long time before I try anything more challenging, and potentially dangerous.

That said, I plan on putting every inch of glass in my RV that I can afford, with every bell and whistle. I'll then use a step down approach for my personal mimums from day VFR, to night VFR, to day IMC, to night IMC... gradually decreasing my personal weather mimimums over a few hundred hours.
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If all owners of high performance, glass-equipped aircraft had this insight and discipline, I'll bet those glass cockpit accident statistics would look MUCH different.

I've taught many people how to fly glass, be it G1000 or GRT. Some of those were FAA inspectors, some were transitioning to LSA. Nearly every one of those pilots needed at least 3-5 hours in the airplane to get comfortable with the display-- that is, know where to look for information and train their brain to look at a number instead of a needle position for airspeed and altitude.

I can imagine that if a pilot conducted the first flight of a brand new glass-equipped airplane with no prior glass experience, it would be very dangerous! (Certainly not slamming people on this forum who have done that-- but I'd be surprised if anyone who's done it thought it was easy.)
 
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Very good points on the difficulty on OBTAINING formal training with our experimental panels, and yes, I agree - the variety of individual systems makes this difficult. Here are a few random thoughts before I have to run off to work....

1) While all experimental glass panels are different, they all share certain similarities in presentation of information that is different from steam gauges. You can train "generically" with glass displays (tapes for ASI and Altitude for instance) by flying MS Flight Simulator with an advanced cockpit. No Avgas burned, and a plus is you get to learn more about managing instrument flight. No danger of collisions being completely "Head's Down". If you can't fly MS FS with the glass, what business do you have in the cockpit of a real airplane hurtling through the air? ;)

2) The best single enhancement to your glass cockpit airplane that you can make is an external power plug. Get a nice shop fan. Sit in the cockpit for hours with the fan blowing on you, learning all the button push sequences. Use the sternal power so that you aren't running the battery down.Until you can sequence the system without significant error, what are you doing flying around trying to push buttons? Burning Avgas and not looking for traffic....

3) OK, so how do you learn the system with lousy documentation and no formal plan? well, as Steve suggests, find a mentor if you can! There are more and more folks who know these systems every day. Ask questions - don't be afraid to look like you don't know something. I ask simple questions every day.

4) First Flight? Why push ANY buttons on the EFIS while you are airborne? Put up the PFD before take-off, and leave it there. Fly the airplane. Your previous training getting used to glass displays will help. Once you have gotten comfortable with the airplane, you STILL don't need to be pushing configuration buttons in flight, Set things like fuel flow constants on the ground. Fly the airplane in flight.

Yup - it is a self-bootstrapping project right now. But don't feel like you have to be flying around with your head down pushing buttons. Do that on the ground. crawl, then walk then run. it's a whole 'nuther way of managing the airplane - it should take you time to learn it - but it is time well spent.

Oh....IFR? I didn't take the val in real IFR for about 200 hours. It took that long before I was comfortable with the reliability and functionality of the systems. Lots of practice - but nothing real. Take your time. I fly numerous different glass systems, switching between them randomly, But I took a LOT of time learning them first. And some that i don't fly often - I won't take IFR without proficiency practice.

Paul (always willing to help answer simple questions when I have the time)
 
I think these are all great posts. I started the thread for feedback from those flying glass more than some definitive cause for the accidents which we don't have enough information about. I'll try to find more data on the report and see if causes, types and aircraft types were broken down.

It's important to note that there was no conclusion that glass caused these accidents only that twice as many glass equipped aircraft were in involved in fatal accidents- an important distinction that some people maybe missing.
 
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answers come eventually

Paul,
Thanks for the generalized list of how to proceed through this learning process. In actuality, to this point I have stepped through the process pretty much just as you spell out above. Prior to my first flight I think I spent about 3 hours one day alone and a total of about 6 or 7 just sitting in the cockpit with instruments powered up and fan blowing on me trying to understand what I was seeing. On my first flight, second flight, third flight, fourth flight. . . Ok, lets just say on about the first two weeks of 1-2 hour flights I set one display on PFD (Primary Flight Display) and the other display on Eng (Engine display) and flew. I did not make attempts to adjust things while flying. If an adjustment needed to be made I made them on the ground. There were many early on. Not so many now. Over time the list slowly gets whittled down as to what needs to be addressed.

As you note, take small steps, one at a time. This is where I have been and where I continue to trod. . . One step at a time.

I think this process is indeed why many experienced pilots question the value in flying these glass panels. There is most definitely a new learning curve one has to process through.

As for me, I have to come to grips with my own self imposed impatience. I want to understand it all, and, I want to understand it all RIGHT NOW. However, I am learning my lesson(s). Full understanding is just not going to happen instantly. Recognizing that is one thing but getting my stubborn brain to apply that idea is still a struggle. However, once I do, I can go about biting off one chunk at a time and processing that. Once I am comfortable with that, I can move on to the next chunk.

The truth of the matter is, this just shows me that "educational" side of our experimental world spelled out by the FAA in the description of the E/AB rule. I am surly getting quite an education with everything I have taken on with building this airplane. Learning to fly behind a glass panel is no exception.

Oh, by the way, in between my last post and this one I had another one of my many conversations with Carlos at GRT. It was extremely helpful with my continuing education. I cannot say enough about how great it is to have access to GRT personnel who are directly involved with the design, implementation and creation of the very instrument I am flying behind. It is truly priceless and I am eternally grateful!

Carlos and Sandy, if you are reading this, THANKS for all your help!
 
One more thing that is quite beneficial is to have the most up-to-date copy of the user, and set up guides.

As far as my GRT units go, there was a world of improvement in the quality/understandability or the guides when I printed out the new stuff---------all 120 or so pages of them:eek:
 
I don't have a picture of it, but the AFS-3500 has one screen that is three ROUND gages: air speed, vertical speed, and altitude. For my first hour on initial flight, that is all that I used.
 
One thing I did before my first flight which included glass, was to hangar fly and become very comfortable with the features & functionality of the glass panel. This included the proper menu navigation & use of all the buttons.
That being said, I felt very comfortable with the displays on first flight.

I'm flying with a Dynon 10A & GRT EIS4000.
 
More glass means more glass incidents

rv6ejguy said:
I think these are all great posts. I started the thread for feedback from those flying glass more than some definitive cause for the accidents which we don't have enough information about. I'll try to find more data on the report and see if causes, types and aircraft types were broken down.
It's important to note that there was no conclusion that glass caused these accidents only that twice as many glass equipped aircraft were in involved in fatal accidents- an important distinction that some people maybe missing.
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A significant thing to (try to) evaluate is the number of glass vs. steam gauge aircraft and hours flown. Since more and more aircraft flying are glass equipped (either new or upgraded), their statistics will grow just due to the numbers. In the not too distant future, the majority of aircraft will be glass and this distinction will lose significance as a statistical discriminator.
 
First thought this is a failure to communicate.

Were there more Glass cockpit accidents in IMC included nin the stats? I am guessing that there are more fatal accidents in IFR conditions than VFR.

Who are the pilots with the glass panels? Are they new to glass? Glass has not been out all that long. The older pilots have surly been brought up with different instruments and training. We are now re-training with instruments that are new to som of us. I have trouble understanding what the glass displays are trying to communicate. Like a dog watching TV. It takes me too long before I get it.

An instrument is a tool to help you correct your flying. I look for how easily and well that information is communicated to you and how well you respond to the information. I find the round gauges are less distracting than the glass. When I look at a round gauge I see one needle and I already know what I am looking for. Is it showing what I expected? I understand better when I see what I expect. Confirm adjust... evaluate? next instrument... keep the scan up.

For me I find the scan of glass difficult to complete without being distracted. I believe that the developers are coming up with displays that better communicate information without distraction. They still have a ways to go. Just show me what I want to see when I want to see it except when I have to be told. Hum??..

I do have as much glass as I could afford. I do find myself fighting with the information overload trying to focus on the important stuff in the ohnoseconds of a situation. (Ohnosecond defined as the period of time between when you realized you just goofed; for example, when you go to change channels and realize that you have been calling position reports to the controlled airspace you last flew through.)
 
Take this with a grain of salt if you wish but I'm 58 years old and used to flying round gauges. I took some advice from someone older and much wiser than myself when it came to glass panels. That's why I have a dual screen TruTrak Efis and EMS in my not yet flying RV-9A. I can identify with the round gauge look much easier than with bar graphs. The Efis can be configured with bar graphs too if so desired but not me. And yes I am totally biased.
 
I think it's revealing that the "panel" panic button on GPS displays brings up analog round gauges, not a generic EFIS with tapes. That surly must be because round gauges with pointers require only a glance to interpret, you can see the low and high limits along with the indication, and each face is dedicated to one parameter. Contrast that with sloshing tapes that you must read and think about the indication's relationship to operations. You don't have the positional advantage of a pointer. (Tru Trak recognizes this difference in presentation with sorta round gauges for its display.)

Could killer EFIS's be a result of a pilot who in normal, unflustered flight, can cope with an EFIS's display, and mesmerized by the dog-and-pony show of information, push into situations they really aren't able to fly?

An airplane's an airplane in our GA spam can/homebuilt fleet. They all fly the same way. Putting glass into an airplane we all should be able to at least herd around the sky should not become a difficult task requiring special training because of the glass panel.

My take: too many buttons, too much info in a restricted space, poor legibility (small fonts, reflections, glare, sunlight wash-out), and poor presentation for our analog brains make an EFIS oft times confusing. But they sure are wonderful for being rid of vacuum pumps and bearings, and generally non-tumbling.

John Siebold
 
I've now seen two mentions of this in the thread so I have to say something:

A bent tape is not the same as a round gauge.

Think of a round gauge. The numbers don't move, and all numbers ever to be indicated are always visible. The needle then moves and points at the stationary number to indicate the current value. This does give you at a glance information about where in the range you are, but not a lot of precision.

A tape is where the needle never moves and is always in the same place. The actual value moves on a tape behind the needle. Lots of precision, but arguably more time to comprehend.

TruTrak has bent tapes, not round gauges. Their needles do not move, and the numbers move behind the needles. It's just that the numbers move in an arc, not straight up and down. But there is no way to glance at this and discern where in the range you are, since only a narrow part of the total range is shown at one time. It has the exact same benefits and restrictions as a vertical tape.
 
I think a few of the EFIS displays have supplemental graphics that help with the "situational awareness" of the tapes. Looking at the photo on page 2 of the Dynon in flught (what was someone saying about eyes in the cockpit too much? :), it looks like the airspeed tape has next to it a greeen/yellow/(presumably)red tape next to it that would scroll with the numbers, even though the needle is stationary. A quick glance at that would tell you where in the arcs you are, and as long as the spacing is consistent from 0 to VNE you would quickly learn what that means.

The vertical speed indicator (at least I think that's what it is) on the right-hand side of the screen (4, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -4 markings) would probably have an extending bar graph that runs alongside it. More like a traditional gauge in this respect, the numbers won't move but the "needle" would grow.

Nothing there for altitude, but I've never been able to quickly read an altimeter anyway... :)
 
Oriented Analog gauges

When I raced cars years ago, all of our gauges were oriented in the IP so that the indicator needle pointed straight up for normal conditions (or redline for the tach). Racing wheel to wheel one didn't really want to have one's head down reading instruments. Digital tachometers were the rage for all of one season. Once drivers learned that they had to be stared at to be interpreted, they lost their whiz-bang appeal.

IMHO there is too much bells and whistles marketing in some of these glass panels and not enough human factors consideration in the design.

LarryT
 
RV7ator said:
My take: too many buttons, too much info in a restricted space, poor legibility (small fonts, reflections, glare, sunlight wash-out), and poor presentation for our analog brains make an EFIS oft times confusing. But they sure are wonderful for being rid of vacuum pumps and bearings, and generally non-tumbling.

John Siebold
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Good points John! What i don't like about glass is when you intend to do one thing but manage to screw up and some unexpected display pops up. The confusion then just grows until you figure out what is going on.

I wonder if reliability plays a roll in this, especially in IMC. I have three glass instruments and over the last 6 years two have failed. Both went unuseable for a while with display problems. My third instrument, a Garmin 396 has not failed but I have managed to get it pretty screwed up while in flight. Lucky for me I fly with steam and glass.
 
Surely MS Flight Simulator/X-Plane etc must be of some benefit here. Perhaps we can start a race between all the EFIS vendors to have an EFIS-equipped flight simulator aircraft on their download pages...
 
Practice - Doesn't Mean Just Repeating Bad Habits

Buying an EFIS and flying without solid training is a little like building an RV and jumping directly into it from a fixed gear production single - a 100kt brain doesn't function well in a plane that cruises close to 200. Interestingly, the guys that seem most committed to regular, recurrent training are the guys that probably need it the least. They seem to know that there's a difference between 10 years of experience and 1 year of experience 10 times over.
An earlier post in this thread mentioned "layering" in the information presented by the EFIS until each level is well understood and the eyes and brain are working together. Great approach. And for those of you who don't see the value of real practice, I offer the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI
Have a great weekend.
Terry, CFI
RV-9A N323TP
 
A lot of it is attitude.

I'm now 65 and started flying my -10 in IMC after thoroughly learning in a friend's -4 with a D-180, then reading the manual for days and sitting in the cockpit with the manual and my D-100 turned on.

As a 41 year ag pilot/CFI, it was a little overwhelming at first but as was mentioned about "layering"..it ocurred to me that that is what I did, essentially. Talk about "old dogs and new tricks?" It sure applied to me but I've grown to love the unity of an HSI as part of my opening default page and can honestly say that I much prefer an instrument approach on my glass than my old steam gauges, with localizer and glide slope right by the attitude indicator.

Best,
 
There is simply not enough data to draw any conclusion about glass cockpits. There are many other variables in motion that coincide with the advent of glass that are not mentioned in the usual stats.
 
Glass Cockpit - merging analog and digital

For those who like glass, but still like the round stuff, it seems to me that something like this is within the technical realm of possibility. Might be a step in a training program towards full glass proficiency?

TruTrak and AFS already have variations of this but nothing that fully incorporates a needle moving on a full gauge and a horizon together.

DigiLogEFISII.jpg


Yes...I have a little too much time on my hands this afternoon ! :)
 
It is all about what your brain knows....

I don't buy into this whole theory that round is better or easier to interpret....

It is what your brain is trained on that matters. Someone that has never seen a steam panel but was raised on glass would think that the steam is weird and hard to understand.

Don't believe this theory? Just pitch some kid a different phone than what they are use to and see how much is slows down their texting....for about 15 minutes until they adjust their brain....

When I did some transition training in my first RV flying, the panel had both steam and glass.. I almost always used the steam because that was what my brain knew...

My panel has all glass and at first it was different but since I had no choice, it only took a small time for my brain to adjust. Sure I spent many hours staring at screen layouts and sitting in the plane hangar flying before my first flight and I am sure this helped the transition.

I love the look of a classic steam panel. I also love the futuristic look of a full glass panel. Both of em can't stop someone from killing themselves if they are dead set on doing stupid things! I do think that all the wiz bang features like terrain, obstacles, synthetic vision, traffic display, in flight weather, etc. sure do help prevent the average Joe from making deadly mistakes.
 
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I was a round gauge guy until I started flying the RV-10. First 5 hours flying behind the Trutrak in Alex's plane and then over 120 hours flying behind the BMA EFIS/ONE. Give me either of those two systems any day over the round gauges. Ten times easier once you get used to them. But you have to get used to them. I think some of those crashes were from people jumping into friends "little" planes after flying much bigger stuff and not being really familiar with these systems.
 
I went from absolutely zero glass panel experience to flying a friend's newly built RV-8 solo to Oshkosh and back home, that is equipped only with glass panels (Dynons).

Other than an occasional glance at the airspeed and altitude, I was often temped to fixate on the D-120 EMS to make sure I wasn't doing anything that would bring to harm the new engine, and would force myself to get my head out of the cockpit and look out the canopy and fly the plane.

I can definitely understand how having too many new shiny bells & whistles might distract a pilot from the prime task at hand (flying the plane) but good self-discipline can go a long ways to remedy that. But one thing that really bothered me the whole trip was that if for some reason the EFIS went tango-uniform on me, I might have been in a world of hurt to land the plane without at least an airspeed indicator since I was pretty green at flying RVs in general and airspeed control is cruicial to land these hotrods-with-wings. Having two GPS units onboard with groundspeed indicated probably would've worked in a pinch, but when the day comes that I finally get to build my own RV, it's gonna have backup "steam gauges" for airspeed and altimeter.
 
I learned on both steam gauges and EFIS (dynon). I found that my inclination on the glass was (and still is) to look at the display - just like TV, it captures your gaze. My CFI and I found that my airwork (steep turns) were better if we turned off the EFIS. For VFR, when you should be looking outside, I am convinced that steam gauges are better and easier to read at a glance.

My current airplane is VFR only, and I feel 100% comfortable with steam gauges. We have an ADI Pilot mounted in the center but low in the panel for inadvertent IMC.

N621CT_G696_web.jpg


I find that when I fly sailplanes, I very rarely look at the panel. The variometer provides lift/sink info and the noise of the slipstream helps provides airspeed info (particularly for changes in airspeed).

If I flew IFR, I'd want glass since it puts all of the relevant information in a small area and - most importantly - changes the display to put important information centrally in the field of vision (e.g., EMS alarms, traffic, etc).

TODR
 
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