Cockpit full of switches

[Ascend Charlie]

An FBO marshaller looked in the cockpit and commented on the number of dials and switches that pilots had to deal with. So, in a quiet moment of cruise I started counting.

I probably missed a few because they are so familiar that they just blend into the background, but here is the tally:

Lights (warning, info) - 123

Switches (2- and 3-posn) - 113

Instruments - 40

Controls - (rheostats, chinese hats, levers, pedals) - 143

Circuit breakers - 224

Making a total of 645+ items that we pilots look at before starting up.

No wonder I need a beer after a day's flying - my brain has an Impending Bypass Light on.;)

[SASless]

More importantly.....

At one time we knew what they were for !

Pretakeoff Check is now....Shiny switches on or forward.....Non-shiny ones back or off.

[SFHeliguy]

Sorry if this is an inappropriate posting. I'm switching over to heli's (specifically looking to get an R22 Robinson to commute in) over here in the San Francisco area. Before switching over, I was flying fixed wing and working toward buying one. The plane that I almost bought might be worth looking at from a comparitive point of view on cockpit complexity was the new single engine Cirrus.

This plane not only reduced the complexity of the cockpit, it also has a parachute recovery system.

Anyway, I think there's a good market out there for the manufacturer that lowers the complexity of the heli's.

[DBChopper]

The R22 may lack complexity and may posess instruments and switches in single figures, but it still has the ability to make me try to start it with the mixture fully lean prior to my LPC. What a plank!

And for you turbine jockeys, that's a sort of petrol lever... ;)

[What Limits]

645? You were lucky. Take a look in the cockpit of an English Electric Lightning Mark 6 - probably 1000+!

[handyandyuk]

DB

Been there... done that.:o

Luckily it wasn't on LPC though:D

[DBChopper]

Handyandyuk,

Luckily the guy doing my LPC had enough of a sense of humour to just take the p*ss out of me and put it down to first-LPC-nerves. It gave me a nice warm feeling to watch someone else do it a year or so later when about to fly with the helicopter's owner though...

Have you noticed the more embarassing the error, the less likely you are to do it again? They shall remain nameless, but a couple of acquaintances once flew to a nearby airfield with the ground handling wheels still attached to the R22...

:eek:

[Happy Landing !]

For you Robo flyers out there......

Heliair has a neat idea..

One switch does it all (Well almost all) Start up as normal then "Flick" the avionics switch and all the other stuff comes alive - Transponder, Giro's, Radio's, CD player. Makes for an easy start.

It's also very cheap to fit (And no I don't work for Heliair Heliport !)

[Lu Zuckerman]

Back when I was flying as flight crew the pilots on our base were current in four types of helicopters and four types of fixed wing aircraft. There were fewer switches and instruments then but it was an accomplishment to maintain currency in eight different aircraft and they may have been qualified as a PPC (Patrol Plane Commander) on several other types.

:cool:

[Rotorhead]

A very experienced senior flying instructor said to me " It is still a requirement for commercial pilots to be able to read." All the switches, cb`s, handles, brt`s (big round things), lst`s (little square things) are labelled - some even have helpful little hints abut max speeds etc. Don`t let the thing intimidate you - the hardest thing is to remember how to start the beast.

After that remember the hardest thing about flying is the ground so look out of the most important instrument in the aeroplane - the window!

[MBJ]

I always thought the switches and dials were mostly to impress the passengers!

I flew a Mil 17 with some East German crew recently in which I was unable to deduce what 80% of the dially things were. Fortunately they had a flight engineer who pranced around behind the pilot's seats and started the machine for us, because the cockpit was so wide that you couldn't reach all the knobs and switches from the front seats anyway, even if you could read the labels!

:D