Newfangled Gadgets

N6017N - C172S - 1.1 hours

What I'm used to

Aside from flying to a vacation destination, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've also always wanted to fly down to a football game at Virginia Tech.  I've been offering to take people down to games, but up until now, nobody's taken me up on it.  Earlier this morning, my friend Ashley set me up with her roommate to talk about a trip.  Because it's supposed to be nice this weekend, most of the planes were booked.  The only one left with enough space in the schedule was one of the G1000 C172S models.  Since this isn't the standard panel most of us learned to fly on, it requires a checkout in order to rent it.  That being the case, I had to book the plane and an instructor tonight to get signed off to fly it on Saturday.  Despite the instructor, Thomas, and my joke that if you're under 30 you could probably figure it out pretty well on your own, requirements are requirements, so off we went.

See the difference?

To be honest, going into the whole thing, I wasn't too enthused about flying "glass," as it's called.  It's not that I'm afraid of it.  It's not that I hate technology.  I know they're IFR capable and I know they have battery backups, but as someone who works with computers all day, I'm very familiar with the idea of single point of failure.  All of your instruments on two flat screen panels reduces the number of points of failure, which is not a good thing.  Then again, as I'm typing this, I'm remembering that most of the planes I've flown in have only one static port, which is arguably worse as it truly is a single point of failure (a blockage of the static port can make a number of your instruments worthless), but I digress.

I think in the end my biggest aversion to them is that people think they're a huge leap forward in aviation.  Don't get me wrong the features (lean assist, among several others) are awesome to reduce workload and optimize performance, but there's something to be said for not putting too much faith in technology.  I'd prefer not to be in the soup with only the basic three instruments.  For those wanting to go down the "it's what the airlines have" route, you're right, but they also often have dual generators, dual batteries, and so on. In any case, I'm making it out to be a bigger deal than it really is, especially now, since I don't have my instrument rating anyway.  It's just an I-work-too-much-with-computers-to-fully-trust-them thing.

During the flight, as I was poking around at the displays, with my eyes distinctly not outside, I figured I might as well get some hood time, so I threw the hood on to start logging.  We tracked the Martinsburg VOR (MRB - a radio beacon), flew headings, and otherwise just prodded the screen to see what it would do for us.  One of the extra features Thomas managed to find was the XM Radio, so we listened to some of that before heading back in to Leesburg (JYO).  For those of you wondering how we hear ATC or other people on the frequency while blasting ourselves with XM Radio, it has auto-interrupt when it senses a transmission on the frequency.

By the end of the flight, I came to like the G1000, but I'm still not going out of my way to fly an aircraft with it installed.  Then again, I won't specifically avoid it.  That gets me thinking, though.  Because I just displayed an aversion to new technology, does that mean I'm getting older?  I'll tell myself no, since I used it with relative ease (if you've used a G530 before, you'll be relatively at home here), but who knows.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0 - 31.8 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.3 - 4.2 (of 40)