DB;
Take a bow! I don't often find myself in agreement with you, but your last post echoes a statement I made on the G-LBAL thread. We have a lot of new toys on aircraft these days, but I personally find the training in the use of them at best poor and at worst downright misleading.
We have also taken a large step backwards over the last 15 years IMHO, JAR/EASA seem to be trying to paper over a lot of cracks using SMS, when CAP 360 procedures were defined in a far tighter manner. I recently made a comparison of a current offshore JAR manual, against a 1999 CAP360 one, and I know which one I found to be the better.
JimL of this parish speaks a lot of sense on automation, when I flew with him we had basic RadAlt, Decca moving maps, monochrome radar and a basic SAS which would just about hold a heading, and flew in some pretty dire weather, I never once saw an altitude bust, never had a "Check height" warning (except when crossing a deck edge) and always felt very confident we all knew what we were doing. Now we seem to be teaching ourselves how the automatics work on the job, and that's no place to be experimenting.
On corporate machines there is a huge lack of knowledge on behalf of the owners, 6 years ago I took an aircraft under management at the point of delivery as the owner had lost faith in the man who had sold it to him. On his first day with us he exploded because his IFR aircraft couldn't fly into his garden in thick fog, he thought it would just come to the hover over his garden and let down vertically. After 3 years he was well into the groove, had a lit helipad, a weather reporting station in his garden and had spent 2 days with us learning how we operate, his PA spent 3 days learning about weights and very basic rules, now all new owners get a thorough brief and their PA's a 3 day course, most of which adds up to "phone us with the task, and don't try to second guess or interfere."
BUT, the aircraft now have systems I would not have believed possible on helicopters 26 years ago, and I do believe that those systems which are designed to make the aircraft more efficient and the job easier are being used to abuse limits by pilots who really aren't that conversant with either the systems, or the rules.
SND