Originally Posted by
EESDL
AI is 'GOD' - for at least 90% of the time whilst IF and without AP.
Never forget my first instructor teaching me the radial scan by saying if you are not looking at the AI then you should be
Interesting discussion, especially the Army guys talking about de-emphasizing the attitude indicator.
When I learned to fly instruments in the early 90s there were a lot of vacuum pump failures happening (I think the technology of the vacuum pumps had changed from wet to dry and the technology wasn't solid yet). So, as a dumb student, I evolved this rather stupid idea that I would de-emphasize the AI, and in that way I wouldn't lose control when I lost vacuum (of course, this is in airplanes, all the helicopters I've flown were all electric AI).
The thing was, I flew lousy on instruments.
Having flown with some very experienced airline pilots I eventually realized the folly and finally put major emphasis on the attitude indicator. No surprise that suddenly my IMC flying got much better. My only regret is that we don't have giant attitude indicators like airliners used to have! Or at least, the IFR B206L3 I fly doesn't. I just put on my old man reading glasses and lean closer to make the AI appear bigger ;-)
I recently had a discussion of Control and Performance (which I teach) versus Primary and Supporting with the senior fixed wing instructor at our school. I was really surprised that he talked about liking Primary & Supporting and de-emphasizing the attitude indicator so that loss of AI is a non-issue. He's non-military, and a very good instructor, but I didn't find his arguments convincing. I'm still of the opinion that using the AI allows you to make extremely small corrections and therefore fly extremely accurately. Perhaps it's the difference of flying electric AIs - I don't worry as much about a loss of control from an AI going bad (you pick it up pretty darn quick in the cross check).
One thing I always carry with me is one of those rubber instrument covers that we torture our students with. The reason I carry it with me is that I find it very difficult to ignore an AI which has failed. I'm so used to the scan that every time I return to the AI (that has "failed") I start to roll/pitch to correct before I remember that the AI is bad. So, I cover it up and that forces me to use the standby (which is just left of the six-pack).
On the humorous side, I've heard the scan called a "music scan" because you should keep a pace of scan going "and-a-one, and-a-two" each time you leave one instrument for the next instrument in the scan. I'm old enough to remember my grandparents watching Lawrence Welk (an American band leader with a distinctive German/European accent), so that whenever I'm instrument flying I hear Lawrence Welk inside my head!
