Originally Posted by
Airmann
What I would like to see however is a transfer of turbulence data from aircraft to a ground station that could then be relayed to other aircraft. I believe that a lot of work is going into turbulence forecasting and its pointless. Much better to just take the data from g loading sensors on board and have the manufacturers work out a way to catagorize it according to turbulence levels and then have that data sent to a centralized location via ACARS.
As for synthetic vision, like others have mentioned it really doesn't add much if one can do a CAT2 or better autoland. As for terraint awareness we have a TAWS database on board, sure the display of terrain on an ND isn't as 'high tech' as synthetic vision but it does the job. The danger is flying the plane using the synthetic vision like a video game. You don't want that in a commercial setting. Having used a HUD for landing I can honestly say that I see no use for it except for certain airports...…....
An automatic turbulence reporting network is a very good idea - aircraft talking to other aircraft in the background, like TCAS, and only popping up with alerts when necessary. That would be good
I agree with Airman's other points too. As I said in post #6, there is no point having synthetic vision or whatever just because you can. You still need to have SA and fly an aeroplane, and turning the whole process into a video game could cause its own problems, with barely qualified pilots thinking they can fly. (I am not being a dinosaur about this, I write (simple) code myself, and am well into technology).
Light aircraft instrumentation has been awful though, so improvements here would be good. It was bloody difficult to track or fly a hold around an NDB in a light SEP/MEP, but only really because the NDB pointer and the compass bug were on different instruments - and sometimes, the "compass" card had to be manually aligned to a real compass every 10 mins, I mean for crying out loud, as if you haven't got enough to do just flying the thing !!. When you can overlay the NDB needle onto the track pointer of a proper compass or ND, NDB tracking is child's play - so easy ! (Yes, yes, I know, we don't track NDB's any more
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Engine FADECs, going slightly off piste here: Frankly having to worry about fuel mixture, carburettor icing, priming pumps, magnetos etc. is absolutely prehistoric !! Like most of us; I can casually reach into my average 2008 car in any weather, any temperature, turn the key and it will start, (while I scrape the ice off the windscreen). But a C150 or equivalent??