Any Helicopter Articles on Over-Reliance on GPS

[muppetdog]

Hey guys, I am looking for some articles on Over-Reliance on GPS in the helicopter world. I am doing some research on for a paper and this seemed like a pretty good topic. I know I have been told more then once by the older guys that use young guys are over reliant on GPS for navigation and that we can't read a sectional properly. My response is always "what's a sectional?"

Thanks in advance

[SASless]

As one gets older....one has to rely on the GPS as one cannot see the map much less read the thing!

If offshore....can one rely upon the GPS too much?

If you have exactly one....or even two GPS's...how do you know they are telling you the truth?

Perhaps you might just look for good articles on the "proper" use of GPS and draw your inferences from those by comparing known common practices to what would be "Industry Best Practices"....thus writing your very own article on the subject.

[Fareastdriver]

I know of one occasion in Asia where a Supa Puma, flying to a rig some 140 miles out found there was nothing there when the GPS said there should be.
The GPS had junped somewhere and they had to turn back to land. Not enough fuel so they had to ditch, successfully, without any injuries by a couple of fishing boats. The aircarft conveniently sank in deepish water so they could not investigate it.
If they had checked that their NDB was pointing in the right direction on departure they would not have gone the wrong way.

[ShyTorque]

One of my pet peeves as a Puma QHI when TANS came into use was the pilots who tried to plan a diversion using the black box, rather than getting out a chart. The old HC1 was always short of fuel (sometimes even before takeoff). Quite often it's not possible to go in a straight line and features such as Salisbury Plain Danger area get in the way, requiring a lengthy diversion and far more precise fuel planning. Using a chart makes that issue immediately obvious, one glimpse is worth more than any number of key strokes.

One RAF Puma later ran completely out of fuel in Portugal and was damaged during the subsequent engine off landing. Not sure how much the pilot relied on GPS/TANS but his in-flight fuel planning was rubbish (and so was his crew co-operation as his crewman/navigator got to the point of threatening to hit him with the fire axe if he didn't land before the engines stopped).

But I can also think of a fatal accident where, if the pilot had made better use of the GPS, all on board might have survived.

[SASless]

Remember the days of old when one had to have the Decca but could launch without the Radar?

Seemed ass backwards to me....give up that magic eyeball that could see through darkness, fog, and cloud....for something that gave up the ghost at the first good whiff of Snow or any other kind of static.

Then there was the Consol station in Norway that was still operational...and pointed from the Ekofisk straight back to New Castle....broadcasting at something like 1500 Watts or some silly thing.

[bolkow]

This question for me raises the same issue that pertains to these newer super duper de-icing systems avialable to allow helicopters to perform rescues flying through icing conditions to get to the scene, what if its offshore, you have flown through known icing to ge there, but before you begin your return your system goes unserviceable? Kinda screwed a bit, are you not? I could not help thinking some of the technology can in such instances lead us into quite dangerous situations we would not have persisted in getting into without them leading us to believe we could equally safely be guaranteed a safe return?

[Helinut]

Start from the premise that anything can fail, so do not RELY on anything. Try and double-up with truly independent systems - 2 GPSs does not hack it, as most of the failure modes are common.

However, you also cannot remove risk, just manage it and control it - if you stay in bed because you are risk averse you will probably die of a heart attack and clogged arteries AND have a dismal existence. Even the UK CAA permit the use of GPS as an IFR approach aid in some cases.

In my experience, there are more problems through poor use of the GPS than errors/failures in the GPS itself: I am not sure that over-reliance is the key problem with GPS at all: blind faith in the digital display, maybe. Knowledge of the system is key, with informed appropriate use.

[birrddog]

The irony is I had a CFI try bollock me on a night flight and a cross country for NOT using the GPS, as I was using my paper charts and calculations to stay current, so I can see why some CPL's may have a stronger inclination to the device.

[GoodGrief]

Try flying without GPS in a country that doesn't issue charts.You have to rely on Jepp.
All you have is road maps and tourist maps
No freqs, no airspaces, nothing:ugh:

[SASless]

GoodGrief.....Good Grief! How sweet it must be! The absence of such "structure" must simplify life quite a bit!

In the early 70's....flying Jet Rangers around Upper Volta, Ghana, Mali, and Ivory Coast was like that pretty much....as lots of the areas on what maps we did have were blank and were labelled "Reported Mountains, Valleys, and Streams". We hand drew some of our own maps for areas where there were none to be had.

There we were back to Mag Compass....Clock....and the ability to imitate a Homing Pigeon. Add in not being able to speak French or any of the local dialects made Life all the more enjoyable.

[GoodGrief]

Oh, you youngsters, how good life is in an SUV.
Back in the 1800 we had horse carriages, underpowered, slow and without air condition.
There were no road signs, not even roads, just ahead we went.We were adventurers...

[GoodGrief]

On a more serious note:
SASless, may I assume that your early seventies african Jetbox flying was within the military? If so, there is quite a difference to 21st century commercial flying.
I think a customer who pays almost €30 for a minute of helicopter time is entitled to a no BS direct line flight wherever possible.
Customers have stopwatches nowadays and they have learned how to multiply.

We used to fly a customer to a certain location often.When I was on vacation a colleague took over. The customer asked why that other pilot needed 12 minutes more time than me on the same route, same aircraft, no BS from ATC.
Needles to say the customer refused further flights with that pilot.
Of course you do your planning, course, time distance, etc, but nowadays that's only backup.

[SASless]

Contract work for the UN spraying rivers to kill Black Flies.....the contract was held by different companies over the twenty or so years the contract lasted.

Straight civvie flying it was....and we rarely carried a customer along....departed on Monday Morning from Bobo...and returned late on Friday...or Mid-day Saturday. Night stopped in towns...and hit fuel stashes during the day. Hand pumped all our fuel and chemical. No radio contact except when taking off or landing at Bobo....and maybe one other airport during the week.

We also had a Pilatus Porter rigged for spraying as well along with the Jet Rangers.

[Flyting]

I think a customer who pays almost €30 for a minute of helicopter time is entitled to a no BS direct line flight wherever possible.
Customers have stopwatches nowadays and they have learned how to multiply.

Got to agree with you on this point GoodGrief...
With technology being what it is TODAY, why people don't use it, God only knows... Sure, check the compass and set the DI/VOR/NDB, but like you say, every minute counts. If it isn't a customer, it's the boss counting every second you're off course :uhoh:

Can't say I've drawn my own maps while flying across some God foresaken african country but, I have added a few things as we went by. Luckily, my flying time in africa wasn't before fire was discovered (:} sorry SAS).
I've done quite a few long ferry trips acrross the dark continent, always with 2 gps', maps in a folder, and my trusty Jepp hi/low as a reference along the way.
We had an ex mil guy who did the trip, old school style on maps, as he didn't trust gps, and needless to say, his flight time was quite a bit more than the gps pilots...and needless to say, the boss wasn't too happy with that extra flight time, which meant he wasn't on the roster again.
Nowadays, it's all about saving time and money, and not building hours.

Most of my ferries are catching winds at high altitude (up to 10000) and saving the $$$$, and when flying across africa where most of the navaids can't even remember what they are supposed to do, you need a GPS. Saved about 2.5hrs on a return ferry once sitting at FL100, which of course didn't go into my Xmas bonus :{.

Most GPS errors come in from human error... i.e. putting in the wrong way points, or just plain not knowing how to use it. I did a back seat flight in a small plane with a friend and a 10000+ hr fixed wing instructor, who had a nice big 11x13cm garmin display on the dash showing them exactly where they were, and they overflew the airport in a bit of haze... All they knew was how to turn it on! Guess who stopped using an old instructor after that conversation once we landed.

Oh, and to see if the GPS is accurate or not, check the display page that gives you the distance of accuracy it has aquired...

[paco]

Nothing wrong with using a GPS - IF you keep a check on its results and gross error check it, and have a map handy if it goes wrong. Never assume that things electrical are producing accurate readings.

One thing super-reliance on it does encourage is a change in the decision making process - with much of the navigation task taken away from you, there is more time to get yourself into deeper trouble if the weather is bad. Also, as it is very accurate, there may be more people in the same airspace looking for the same spot - also bad in poor vis.

Phil

[Fareastdriver]

GPS is a navaid, nothing else but is a very good navaid. Like all navaids it has to be checked before you rely on it. That's why you do a frequency and ID check on a VOR or ILS. A simple check of it knowing where it is and which direction it is going to send you is always required using a seperate aid or the simple eyeball.

There are people who will happily follow a GPS telling them how to get to a westerly destination whilst they are shading their eyes from the morning sun.

[John R81]

Or being affected by the rise in GPS jamming

BBC News - Sentinel project research reveals UK GPS jammer use (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17119768)

Unlikely to have a problem going offshore, I would have thought. Can't see the truck drivers making that big a mistake!

[Genghis the Engineer]

A quick look on some academic databases...

Cambridge Journals Online - Abstract (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=139755)

http://odra.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/arc/programs/academy/journal/pdf/Spring_2004.pdf#page=107

http://ipv6.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/arc/programs/academy/journal/pdf/Spring_2006.pdf#page=121

http://www.bluecoat.org/reports/Heron_97_GPS.pdf

The Role of Trust and Interaction in GPS Related Accidents: A Human Factors Safety Assessment of the Global Positioning System (GPS) - Enlighten (http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/40172/)


This sounds like a worthwhile and interesting research question to be pursuing, where are you hoping to go with the research?

G

[Flying Binghi]

.

Can't see the truck drivers making that big a mistake!...

Wot about a speed boat driver...


"...Alan Grant of the General Lighthouse Authorities carried out an experiment in 2008 to assess the degree to which ships would be affected by a jamming signal. Using a relatively low-power jamming signal off the eastern English coast, he found that ships coming into the jamming area suddenly read locations anywhere from Ireland to Scandinavia..."

BBC News - Sat-nav systems under growing threat from 'jammers' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8533157.stm)




.

[SASless]

Flyting.....We had plenty of "fire" and told the Boss Fellah....if we ever became overdue and had not seen another helicopter tracing our route looking for us within three days....all he had to do was look for a very dark,dense, column of black smoke. We might not get found but then the helicopter would not either!

[61 Lafite]

I had a moving map gps freeze the screen on me a few miles before a turn to avoid controlled airspace. Fortunately, I had a second GPS on board, and glancing at it realised I was a lot closer than I expected to be and that the first one wasn't moving the map. Without that backup I probably would have infringed.

That lesson made me cross-check with the map far more frequently, and I make a rough mental note of a clock time when I'm due to be turning if I'm approaching an important waypoint. I also prefer to have two of them, one programmed with the route, the other just showing my position and airspace etc.

Lafite

[JimBall]

Sometimes the GPS is perfectly accurate, but people get killed because the database is not current. So - never rely on installed GPS to be current, and ensure that any handheld you have is marked with the last date of update.

And they do get jammed very easily. It takes half a watt.

Also, operating over NW England for the visit of a senior US politician, the US turned off the GPS for the whole area.

[SASless]

A Half Watt?

More risk is imposed by a Half Wit!

[espresso drinker]

Not helicopter specific, but there's another article on the net this morning about a study on jamming and over reliance on GPS systems.

UK Sentinel study reveals GPS jammer use | ZDNet UK (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2012/02/22/uk-sentinel-study-reveals-gps-jammer-use-40095106/)

The government-funded Sentinel project has uncovered more than a hundred incidents of GPS jammer use in the UK since January 2011.

"The idea behind Sentinel is to detect and locate interference," Chronos Technology's divisional manager Andy Proctor told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. "Until you physically get a jammer in your hands you can't claim 100 percent it's a jammer, because you don't know what's been causing the interference."

The Sentinel field trials of GPS jamming involved sensors in different locations. One sensor placed in a city next to some docks and a two-lane link motorway found 67 incidents of vehicles using GPS jamming over a six-month period, according to Chronos Technology's managing director Charles Curry.

"These events were real and corroborated," Curry told ZDNet UK at the GNSS Vulnerability: Present Dangers, Future Threats 2012 conference.

GPS jammers work by broadcasting a strong local signal on the same frequency as GPS, effectively drowning the weak GPS signal broadcast by satellites. People illegally jam GPS for a number of reasons, Curry told the audience at the conference at the National Physical Laboratory. These include evasion of company-vehicle or covert tracking, and stealing high-value vehicles.

In prior trials, a white van driver using GPS jamming had been apprehended by police, said Curry. The man, who was not brought to trial, was using jamming to evade company GPS tracking. ZDNet UK understands the man was apprehended as part of trials of GAARDIAN, a preceding technology to Sentinel. GAARDIAN trials ran from 2008 to 2011.

[John R81]

I didn't realise that there was an echo in here

[Swiss Cheese]

Having just spent 5 days in Belfast at the Coroners Court Inquest into the N2NR Agusta 109 crash in the Mourne Mountains, I suggest you read the AAIB report into the tragedy. What is interesting is that the Skymap IIIc did not depict terrain above 2,000ft, even though it gave a scale and colour chart for terrain well above 2,000ft.

Regardless of the niceties of VFR, and GPS being secondary, in the real pragmatic world, considerable reliance can and is placed on GPS data.

I remain concerned that the Skymap IIIc has this serious limitation re terrain above 2,000ft, seemingly without any user knowledge.

The summit of Shanlieve in the Mourne Mountains is 2092 feet. N2NR impacted 118 feet below that summit.

I expect an AD re the Skymap IIIc in due course, so that at least there is some awareness of its limitations.

Anyone interested in this topic can PM me, as it seems to be a real safety issue.

[JimBall]

The lawyes could have a field day against the CAA on this. Given the time & money it takes to certify a GPS, you'd hope that the "certifiers" might have actually tested every aspect of the device.

That's one of the problems caused by certified installs. The other is that, by the time it's got certification, the unit is already outdated in technology.

You get better data & performance from a £700 handheld.

[RVDT]

I expect an AD re the Skymap IIIc in due course

Unless the unit is certified (which it isn't as far as I can establish) there will never be an AD.

The installation will have been certified as to not interfere with the aircraft systems but as far as navigation certification goes I would seriously doubt it.

According to Bendix King data there are NO approvals for the Skymap. It appears to be a USD 33,000.00 handheld that you can mount in your panel if you wish.

Extracted from the Skymap Pilots Guide -
This equipment is not a replacement for your chart. It is intended as an aid to VFR
navigation only. The database within the equipment has been compiled from the latest
official information available, and although every care has been taken in the compilation,
the manufacturers will not be held responsible for any inaccuracy or omissions therein

[Helinut]

Unless it is very unusual, part of the installation will have included a label stating pretty much what RVDT quotes. You should understand what your kit does and does not do. A Skymap is NOT an IFR/IMC device but a VFR aid.

[birrddog]

Is terrain an IFR only feature?

I would think it is just as deadly in VFR conditions.

[bigm]

:ugh: Some of the articles I would suggest are:

"Aviation Sectionals Blowing out of Helicopters, Over Reliance on Pilotage no longer taught in Flight Schools! all Passengers almost Die!"


"When 2 Engines aren't enough, Reliance on the Modern Turbo-Shaft Engine points back at multiple Piston Engines in Modern Helicopters"


"Aircraft Pilots Use AM Radio Beacon to Listen to Ball Game, violate TFR and land in Wrong City"


"When good fuel goes bad, helicopters now require clean fuel delivered to the engine to be safe, think twice before going up"


and my personal favorite:

"Over-Reliance on the Air Traffic Controller, When Happy-Hour runs long"

Sarcasm emphasized.

Give me a break, the GPS system is a very redundant government operated system relied upon for many operations, not just aviation. If you have such concerns about your GPS going out, either within the aircraft, or a system-wide outage, you should be prepared to use the other tools available to you from the first day of flight school. Pilotage, compass, ATC vectors, VOR, NDB's all come to mind.

Use GPS as a tool like any other, and have a back up in mind just like any other system on your aircraft.

[Peter-RB]

When I was in my training two of the three Fi's seemed to always want to use the GPS first, the maps as a back up, the reason being given was that it was easier when flying a heli to refer to the GPS , but even around the north of England the GPS was never as good as a old fashioned map with Hi Viz ink lines drawn showing headings and wind direction. Now that was 12 years ago and I would suspect GPS units are better now than then, but I would only really use the GPS as a cross ref for the maps on any long flight into unfamiliar territory.

How many people even today using Sat Nav in car's finish up taking longer or being presented with roads not suitable for HGVs and cars,
..No GPS is merely an aid to Flyers rely on it soley and you may not get to your required destination !

Peter R-B
Lancashire