I am not a pilot, but an aviation enthusiast. My flight time has been limited to a few hours as a front seat passenger in a Cessna 152 or 172 and handling of the controls for a few moments.
I am however an avid Flight Simulator (student) pilot, using an open source flight simulator called Flight Gear. My favourite flights at the moment are in a Cessna 172p or a Piper PA 28 or the Commanche practicing what I know about flight navigation. It is a rewarding experience to take off, dialing the heading to the autopilot and being able to locate a remote airport and then land. From what I remember the effect of the simulator is quite realistic.
After many years of simulator flying, viewing innumerable cockpit photos and videos, and inspecting actual museum aircraft at close quarters, I am still left with an impression that there is a vast difference in ergonomics between automobile instrument panels and those of aircraft flight instruments.
Obviously pilots are required to go through extensive training, not the least of which is the use of flight instruments. Therefore they are unlikely to encounter any difficulty. For the casual observer, however, the instruments in aircraft, the steam gauges as they are, are confusing, not only in their number but in their haphazard arrangement and general readability or lack thereof as compared to the say the speedometers and tachometers of any recent model automobile.
Could it be that the aircraft flight instrument industry has lagged far behind in ergonomic instrumentation? The new large aircraft, it must be admitted such as the 777 have attractive, highly functional looking instrument flight instrument systems, and cannot be much faulted in my opinion.
If one is to judge from appearances, then, looking at these same steam gauges in light aircraft could it be that except for the new glass cockpits in use, be actually the ergonomic nightmare that they appear to be?
Some obvious ergonomic faults:
- Instrument panel set at 90 degrees so the pilot is looking at the gauges at a 30 - 45 degree angle
- The ASI is to the left extreme of the pilot
- The altimeter is always difficult to read with its three overlapping white colored pointers
- The ASI reads from top right down to top left up again, at least the VSI is spared this fate, only indicating up and down.
- The RPM gauge is to the extreme right of the cockpit our lower down in the panel
- The panels seem excessively high in some aircraft
I would appreciate the pilot’s point of view on these areas – hopefully we could see more ergonomic glass as well as steam gauge instruments in the future like those in automobiles?