Week 15: some context

Happy new year to all of you, hopefully you all overindulged on New Years Eve! 

RNAV has continued to develop our knowledge of navigation but from a more practical sense, and as much as it seems to be saturating our brains with a long list of facts, it's a more interesting subject as we can see how it will be applied practically. For those budding pilots similar to me who have done a lot of visual flying, you have to accept that 99% of the flying done for the airlines is based on information read off the instrument panel rather than which way up the houses are!

Virtual Flight Deck (VFD)

MCP across top, two CDU's facing upwards

Thus far we have learnt about the various ground based beacons, as well as the instruments within the cockpit used to interpret them. Learning from a powerpoint presentation makes things difficult to appreciate, so CTC use a computer programme that brings together all of our knowledge into a single scenario. From a technical stand, as a class we used a control display unit (CDU) to initialise the flight management computer (FMC) and the Inertial reference system (IRS), for a flight from Heathrow to Dublin. We then were able to operate the Mode control panel (MCP) (the source of most autopilot inputs), following on the glass screens and operating a real flight from the moment we applied take off power to touchdown in Dublin.

For myself and my course-mates on the MPL, the use of glass cockpit style screens will also become our main source of information from the moment we start flight training in Hamilton. These are a few images of the Cessna 172 instrument panel, starting with the traditional 'steam driven' dial panel (right), followed by the Garmin G1000 glass cockpit (below). Even the most clueless amongst you will notice the lack of separate screens, with information more easily accessible from a single source.

On closer inspection the observant will notice three standby dials just above the throttle/mixture levers (Airspeed, Attitude and Altitude), but the main screen for normal operations matches closely something found on a modern airliner. This is where the MPL and Wings courses start to differ; the Wings cadets will fly the DA20 with conventional dials, then if necessary can fly the conventional paneled Cessna 172 before moving onto the glass cockpit Twinstar. However, due to the nature of the MPL course the cadets are exposed to glass cockpit operations from the outset, so that the transition through the various competences is almost seamless! Hopefully during my time in New Zealand ill be able to post a fair few videos/pictures whilst flying, but for the moment you'll have to accept the one I pinched off the CTC website!