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Shown here is the instrument panel of the Comet 4 with the basic six instruments delineated by a white line, a not uncommon practice in British aircraft of that era.
Impressions – A320 Glass Cockpit
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The a320 Glass Cockpit – The Presentation of the Future
Recently Ansett was kind enough to allow me an hour in the A320 simulator for a brief look at the “glass cockpit”. My aim was to try and get a feel for just how much it represented a quantum development from the old basic “six instrument” panel.
As an old instrument rating examiner, I often pondered the question, was the pilot I had under test just looking at the instruments and making them read what they should, or was he seeing through the instruments, a picture of what the aircraft was actually doing? An apt analogy would be a blind person, experienced in reading braille. He is not so much feeling dots, or even reading the word, but directly seeing a picture.
An early lesson in instrument presentation was the combined oil temperature/pressure and fuel pressure gauge in the Wirraway. We were taught that it wasn’t necessary to “read” the gauge but to merely glance at it to confirm that the needles were forming an inverted “T”. If so, all was well, if not, you then had a closer look at what the actual readings were. The point I am trying to make is that instruments must be “user friendly”; you should be able to get their message with a glance and not have to study the dial to extract the necessary information.
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