Is Partial Panel still relevant?

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Rich
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Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by Rich »

Once upon a time part of training inevitably include "partial panel", where your CFI would cover the AI and maybe the gyrocompass with some sort of contrivance and make you do all sorts of things without benefit of these 2 instruments. (And for fun maybe throw in a hold on an intersection where you only had one single-frequency VOR receiver.) There were various failure scenarios that were being simulated, but mostly it was vacuum-pump failure.

But none of us (I think) has vacuum-driven instruments and it would be individual-instrument failure that would be in play. Or maybe electrical-system failure of some sort. Even in my humble case (steam-gauges), I have a Foreflight-based AI and synthetic vision as a backup.

I was just wondering what kinds of things the rest of you are pummeled with in instrument training these days. Other than IPC's, this stuff (including minimally-equipped airplanes) is behind me, thankfully.
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ultraturtle
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by ultraturtle »

I too, have a Stratus 2 linked to ForeFlight on an iPad and a VHF handheld to provide breathtakingly capable attitude, groundspeed, GPS altitude, bearing, position and communications backup in the case of any problem up to and including a total electrical power failure. I understand the question, but ask you to rethink your question in the aftermath of AirFrance 447.

This disaster involved a highly experienced and qualified flight crew that experienced what we armchair quarterbacks would reconstruct as a simple pitot tube blockage that would have been recognized and corrected for had they been regularly exposed to partial panel techniques. Fact is, they did not get that sort of training from their airline and may not have been exposed to it for as much as decades since they flew General Aviation. The crew was (unjustifiably IMO) blamed for the accident. Mind you that the A330 was operating on a waiver of a well documented problem with its pitot heat systems. The Air Data Computer (ADC) which takes inputs from at least 3 sources and generally tosses out the one that does not agree, gave bad info because at least two of the pitot inputs froze up. After the autopilot disconnected, the pilot flying raised the nose to prevent what he thought to be overspeeding. As the altitude increased, so did the indicated airspeed (remember ground school?) triggering a continuing increase in pitch resulting in an unrecoverable stall that killed everyone.

Partial panel training remains important, but instructors would be wise to include whatever ForeFlight/Stratus or similar setup you always fly with. GPS altitude and groundspeed may not accurately reflect your barometric altitude and indicated airspeed situation, but trends do, and can keep you alive long enough to sort things out.

As a footnote, every major airline now incorporates their own version of partial panel training, usually with a memory item checklist labeled something to the effect of "Airspeed Unreliable". That checklist was never a thing before AirFrance 447.
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Rich
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by Rich »

My question is more about what can realistically be simulated in an airplane, in flight. Traditional instrument failures that you can simulate seem to be more-or-less irrelevant in the context of the systems many of us currently used.

Simulators are a different matter, of course. and that's where you might be able to induce conditions to really challenge the victim, er, trainee. But what kind of partial-system scenarios are realistically induced in our airplanes these days?
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by Pascal »

My DA20-C1 has steam gauges.

In the past, while flying a rentsl DA20, I've had the AI die on one occasion. Not a big deal when you can see the horizon outside. The problem would be to belueve a faulty instrument while fying in the soup.

On another occasion, maybe in 2004, the pitot was partially blocked in-flight by bugs. I saw the indicated airspeed going down to below 30 knots, a speed at which an old Cessna 172 isn't supposed to fly anymore. But the propeller kept turning and the engine sound remained the same. I just asked the tower at what speed they saw me on the radar. He answered 70 knots. So I requested the longuest runway, came down a little hot for a landing, and pulled power to idle and just let the speed bleed off, until the airplane landed itself.

So for me partial or complete panel failure is something I know can really happen so I try to prepare for it very seriously. And yes, I do believe Foreflight with synthetic vision is the best thing for aviation safety since the advent of the first gps units.

You are very fortunate to have glass panels. That eliminates DGs drifting, and all sort of gyro and vaccuum failures. But as others have said, these create a whole new class of failures. We will learn how to recognize these failures and how to best handle/mitigate them as accidents happen and ntsb reports are published.
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by Lou »

I had an instrument failure on a training flight in a C172 (static port, I think - altimeter froze, airspeed dropped, rate of climb to 0). We had just taken off so it was obvious things weren't right. So it happens.

The exercise of thinking "what now?" is always useful. Even if Foreflight is the backup, it's good to practice the transition. The G1000 training manual has some suggested instrument failure scenarios.
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by linzhiming »

Rich wrote:My question is more about what can realistically be simulated in an airplane, in flight. Traditional instrument failures that you can simulate seem to be more-or-less irrelevant in the context of the systems many of us currently used.

Simulators are a different matter, of course. and that's where you might be able to induce conditions to really challenge the victim, er, trainee. But what kind of partial-system scenarios are realistically induced in our airplanes these days?
During my training and checkride, the instructor/examiner failed AHRS, ADC and a combination of both by pulling the respective circuit breakers. See pages 15 and beyond at http://www.corporatejetsolutions.com/PD ... 0Guide.pdf for descriptions of recommended failure scenarios.

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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by danno2000 »

I just finished instrument training in a DA40 and my instructor had some fun with me. When we were doing unusual attitudes, he re-caged the attitude indicator at some point while my eyes were closed, so that flat-and-level actually read a left climbing turn. He also pulled various circuit breakers at times to simulate failures, similar to what Wolfgang said above.

He also failed the WAAS in the Garmin 530 on an approach, just to test if I would revert from LPV to LNAV minimums.

I agree with the OP that odds are good you're either going to get a single instrument failure or a catastrophic loss of nearly everything, but the thought exercise was still useful in my opinion.

best,
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by Colin »

I had an alternator failure before I had my Stratus and iPad. We were VFR so I didn't bother getting ready to pull the switch on the standby instruments. But it made me much happier to have the iPad as a backup. And now I have two engines powering all that stuff, so it would be pretty difficult to take it ALL out.

My DPE for the instrument rating opened his little notebook and had the little circular rubber discs for "failing" various instruments. He gestured to the G1000 screens and said, "With these things it's really hard to train partial panel and I'm not sure you would get much from the training anyway. We'll just ignore that stuff."
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Rich
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by Rich »

danno2000 wrote: He also failed the WAAS in the Garmin 530 on an approach, just to test if I would revert from LPV to LNAV minimums.
How do you fail the WAAS?
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Re: Is Partial Panel still relevant?

Post by danno2000 »

Rich wrote: How do you fail the WAAS?
Just an oral declaration. The glide indicator was still fully functional. However, we had been getting some satellite integrity warnings sporadically and so the simulation was directly relevant to that aircraft.

dan
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