Hey guys,
Glass panels are a different world. I learned to work with them though, and now I read them as fast as regular steam gauges.
The key is to look at the exact point of where the info is you are looking for instead of looking at the entire gauge. With that, if you want your air speed, you look at that little box that has your airspeed readout at. Not the entire tall box, but the small rectangle that has your exact speed.
If you want Altitude, you look at the small rectangle that has your 'exact' Altitude reading, (digitals, not numbers, but then you have numbers on a steam gauge too, but the needle is traveling in a circle instead of up and down a strip of numbers, linear instead of radial, straight instead of a circle).
The center acts as an artificial horizon, so that is easily gathered, especially since it takes the entire screen background.
Then, note that your radios are now located in this same screen, and now are simply a couple of knobs, couple of buttons, and one, single bar accross the top of the screen that show you where your freq settings are at. Too easy on that one.
Then, (my most important one) is the compass rose (lower center) which has your heading, CRS needle, GPS NAV data (headings, vectors, just like your regular every day HSI and VOR gauges) all in one.
So, for me, in a flight, needing to know where I am at, I look at the compass rose (CDI). For airspeed, the small black rectangle on the left. Altitude is the small black rectangle on the right, vertical speed (VSI) is the black arrow usually parked by the Altitude small black rectangle, and radios on the radio bar.
Takes about an hour to adopt it, and after several flights, its just like steam gauges, at least for me it was.
But..... For some, these gauges do not work well. I have no idea why they dont. I have made them as simple as possible. Here is a retrospect on the issue or 'mystery'.
Steam Panel; all gauges are seperate, radial instead of digital or linear.
Screen panel; all gauges are combined into 2 screens. All gauges are in one screen, so you could say, the gauges are in 'one' screen, as the GPS lives in its own screen. So now, you have the same gauges, but in digital or linear formats, and same number of codes, but in one gauge format or 'grouping' instead of say 5 or 12.
A wierd thing. It should run faster as its in one code. But it runs slower on 'some' computers and none of us can figure out why. I can get the MFD now to run faster then my PFD, but its still a mystery as it should be running ultra fast.
So there it is. :d The wild world of screen systems, the panels of the future, now locating themselves in so many of our modern planes. I myself like them all, from a modern glass panel system, to both modern and vintage steam gauges, to vintage German gauges, circa 1930's. They all have their 'intrigue' and values.
Some like a Speedometer on a 57 Chevy far better then a Speedo in a Mazda sport coupe. Some like reading a map rather then going through the menus of a GPS screen.
I can certainly say, its much easier to make steam gauges then a Garmin, lololol... Goodness!!!!
<--- overladen with gray eyebrows now
