Originally Posted by ZFT
I will disagree with you somewhat about “moving the goal”. I believe that the regulatory authorities do have the responsibility to do just that to ensure the FSTDs being designed today do take advantage of the latest technologies and take into account the current training needs. Sensible and realistic implementation times should alleviate any pain and already qualified devices should either be exempt or given very realistic timeframes to comply.
Once again, I agree with your statements – and to clarify, I do not believe that taking advantage of newer and better technology is necessarily moving the goal.
My statement had to do with establishing criteria after having discussed it thoroughly and after it becomes a part of a particular simulator saying that because newer or better technology has become available, the regulatory authority will no longer accept that now “older” technology to do what it was designed to do – and does. To make it a requirement to acquire and use the new technology, I believe it would have to provide significantly better understanding, significantly better, hands-on training, or both, to require that technology be incorporated. It’s been my experience that when newer technology makes headway into simulation, it allows new tasks, tasks that up to then could not be accomplished, or accomplished only to allow an entry into an accomplishment checklist, to now be adequately addressed. That’s not moving the goal.
For example, we’ve been discussing the current development process of software that can better use existing or yet to be gathered flight test data that is supposed to more realistically be able to represent a flight simulator in the post-aerodynamic-stall portion of flight (…presuming, of course, one would or could consider post-stall to still be flying …) In this particular example of technology providing something that had not been available previously, it’s not something to make what we already do quite well, just a slight bit better … what this appears to be providing is to allow a whole new adventure into actually taking a flight simulator into and past the aerodynamic stall – and have the simulated airplane realistically perform and handle just as the airplane would under similar circumstances.
With the number of “upset/stall” or “inattention-induced stall” scenarios apparently being seen to have caused some very serious compromises to safety – and doing so on an increasing level – and, now, with this newly developed capability, if we can effectively train pilots to be better able to determine the insidious nature of stall onsets in some cases, and how to take the proper action to prevent that circumstance from developing into a stall … or if the flight crew were to surprisingly find themselves in a nose high, buffeting descent, they will be able to recognize what is happening and know what to do in order to correctly recover the airplane to normal flight … would, certainly in my opinion, and I would think in the opinions of many other aviation professionals, be worth changing the existing requirements to ensure these serious compromises to safety can be adequately addressed – and hopefully permanently eliminated.
Again, in my not-so-humble-opinion, that’s not moving the goal … that would be finally establishing a goal that now can be met in an environment that is safe and almost without any significant degree of danger. In this particular case, a rule change – requiring each pilot to be trained on the recognition of and recovery from both approaches to stall and fully developed stalls would likely not find any significant objection and would provide a level of safety that the previous requirements were thought to have provided … but did not.
Originally Posted by ZFT
A little bit of history, they came about because of a certain FAA inspector by the name of Sam Van Dyke and the original requirement for a certain level of reflected light from a face.
I cannot let an old friend’s name go by without acknowledging it … I knew Sam quite well and still think of him regularly … in fact, his wife, Thelma, and I continue to exchange Christmas cards each and every year. Thanks for noting him. And for those of you who did not have the good fortune to know Sam … the light reflected from a person’s face was an issue that long dogged the development and incorporation of daylight visual scenes and the resulting amount of light that fills the airplane cockpit during the daylight hours – as it was difficult to achieve that amount of light in the darkened environment of a simulator cockpit.
You see, Sam’s skin color was black ... and the reflected light from Sam’s face was often the subject of this somewhat controversial "discussion" - as it was always good for a "reflective review" of the requirements (pun intended). However, the thing that was, without a doubt, THE most telling color of Sam’s personality was that he had a heart of pure, very shiny, GOLD!