Originally Posted by
Jabawocky
Speaking of cookbooks. I have been talking to a Cessna TTX pilot of late. The POH is far better detailed than many early POH's but my critical assessment is they tried to make a recipe book of it and have left some dangerously vague info in there.
Unfortunately, a manufacturer's POH pretty much has to be a bit of a cookbook. That's reality. Mind you, I'm not anti-LOP/advanced engine management in any way. However, the guy writing the POH cannot assume that the reader is knowledgeable about internal combustion theory, nor can they include a large tutorial. If your POH contains all the necessary background material to understand the techniques from the AP seminars, there's going to be a whole bunch of pilots who aren't going to read it, or are going to read it and arn't going to understand it. Like it or not, a manufacturer really has to aim for the lowest common denominator with a POH, with something along the lines of: "if you follow these steps and observe these limits, you will achieve an acceptable result". perhaps the examples you cite could have been executed better, but I don't think you're ever going to get away from a cookbook format.