Bubbers said it. They didn't have "performance" data available. They had attitude and a myriad of control law reversions and loss of several of the so-called "protections"
I am a dinosaur like several here. I evolved. I never forgot my basic instrument training and drills and never forgot two thousand hours in single seat jets that had primitive instruments. I also found my HUD flight path marker and the pitch lines very valuable displays to cross check with the steam gauges. Now there was a true performance indicator. Actual flight path with respect to the earth. No need for air data or flight directors or auto-whatever. Keep the damned thing on that big "horizon line" and you didn't climb or descend. Over the ocean or the desert at night, that sucker was invaluable.
As with many here, I have serious problems with the airmanship of the new crop. As a nugget, my instructor would hand me "paste-on" doofers to cover all the intruments except the turn/slip indicator, airspeed and altimiter. Them make me fly an ADF approach at a field. True "needle, ball and airspeed". So I was not a pinball wizard, and I never flew a "flight director" system that provided course interception, bank angle steering, etc.( the A-7D doofer sucked, and no one used it) Even original Viper didn't have that. My HUD video shows what we had - a raw display of ILS centerline and glide path. Was up to me to center all the needles.
So I maintain that a simple HUD with pitch lines and velocity vector would be invaluable in IFR or at night over a dark ocean. It would be especially valuable if HAL deemed all the air data, including AoA, unreliable. Hell, I can still tell that I am climbing or staying level or whatever. Don't need AoA. I can see that I am level and can move stick and throttles to stay on that flight path.
Gotta go before I get carried away
Last edited by gums; 25th Jun 2012 at 03:07.