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Old 2nd Sep 2006, 18:17
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Mad (Flt) Scientist
 
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Originally Posted by Dan Winterland
....why don't we get a display on the flight deck?
Cost! .....

The Tucano .... indexer is not calibrated to the approach speed of the Tucano in RAF service and is not much use. And use of the guage was not taught.
..... I used it regularly from that point.
Cost might a reason why an operator might not choose an option. But the reason why it's not even offered as an option is FEAR - fear of what it will be used for by pilots, fear by the engineering and design people. And the second part of your post shows why we FEAR installing AOA gauges. You had a system that you know isn't much good and which you were never taught to use, but now you've decided to "use it regularly".

One of the biggest hurdles to implementing ANY new display device - not just AOA - is a fear that it will be misleading, or misused. Even if we don't take cert credit for a display, it has to pass the "causes no hazard" test, and agencies will generally assume that if its there and misleading, people will be misled.

Turn things the other way round for a moment; suppose you had an aircraft which was flown with AOA as primary, and then we decide to add airspeed as a "nice to know" secondary display. Without knowing about PEs and SSECs and reversionary systems and redundancies and all the other things we have to do right now for airspeed displays - would you just fly based on an unapproved display?
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