The road trip from Germany was five hours long, so we first went for a lunch in a close-by restaurant. You can certainly guess what we talked about… It quickly became obvious to me that Lorenzo is seriously passionated about flying (he’s preparing his PPL on a SuperCub in a field in the heart of the Alps), and has extensive knowledge of the Pilatus family. He’s particularly a fan of the PT6 engine that powers the whole range of Pilatus aircraft.

We then moved to the first spot of the visit, where the metallic parts are created out of aluminium blocks. Pilatus actually builds aircraft “from scratch”. The blocks of aluminiums on this pictures are an aircraft to be, and the small cylinders are made of aluminium chips to be recycled. The production hall is fully equipped to factor any kind of pieces, as the ones below… Pilatus is still a mid-size, family like company, with approximately 1000 employees. The proximity between all departments makes the whole development process really quick.

On our way to the composite workshop, we saw an historical aircraft: the first PC-12 that was ever built, which is now on display between the various buildings… The location of the site itself, between the mountains and the lake, is rather exceptional, and creates a unique mixture of rural, agricultural environment, with high-tech industry.

Even if the aircraft are mostly made of aluminium, they are partly made of composite parts (did you say plastic ?), which are also produced on site. Injection and “cooking” are all made there. Pilatus is also a partner of the Sauber Petronas Forumal One team, and some parts of the car are produced here as well.

The next step was the assembly hall, where the wings and horizontal plane are assembled with the main part of the fuselage. Landing gear, avionics, doors, flaps, turbine, propeller, de-ice boots also get assembled, like a giant puzzle. Despite all the automatisation of the pieces production process, some wokers were giving the “final touch” manually, to make sure that everything is perfect.

One small room on the side of the hall has a very specific purpose: preparation of the ejector seats for the military trainers. That’s quite a specialized job, and it has many safety relevant aspects. The guys working there are nevertheless doing it with a touch of fun, as shown by the cartoon on the door.

The two next hangars were stricly “NO PHOTO” areas. The first one was the avionics simulator for the PC-21. The equipment there contains all the standard components of a PC-21 cockpit, including the head-up display (HUD), while the rest of the systems are simulated. The avionics developers also have a full-size PC-21 cockpit with three beamers for the outside view to test and validate their development. We could see it in action, and there were some surprising elements for me. For example, the airspeed and altitude indicators on the PFD are not tapes, but depicted as needles.

The next hangar was the PC-21 workshop. The only picture of a PC-21 I get was on the tarmac. In the hangar, we could see it very closely, including the engine, avionics bay (much easier to access that the Jumbolino’s one…), and the cockpit. We could even climb on the wing, and have a very close look to the cockpit. The PC-21 has been designed to offer flying characteristics as close as possible to those of jets, to make the transition easier. It even includes some computer-assisted controls that automatically compensate for torque and P-factors, making it a single engine propeller aircraft for which no “right foot” action is required on take-off !

This objective is perfectly fulfilled, as some pilots alread transitionned directly from the PC-21 to jet fighters. As we were leaving the site, one of them was flying overhead, and integrated the pattern by flying rather aggressive turns with high bank angles. Apart from the propeller noise, it could have been a jet…

The final step of our visit was the completion hall. This is in a brand new hangar, inaugurated one month ago, which is almost all made of wood. The place is really amazing: not less than 16 PC-12 were getting completed. As an average, one gets out of the factory every two days. As a fan of this aircraft, I was feeling like in heaven.

One of the aircraft there was undergoing a pressurization test. An external compressor was pressurizing it, probably beyond the normal pressure differential, to make sure that all components were able to sustain it. To protect the workers and the environment, it was covered with a net, to catch any part that could pop-out. Needless to say, the test was sucessful, and totally uneventful.

With so many PC-12s around, I did not knew anymore in which direction to look, nor what to photograph. I made the now very classical propeler spinner photograph (click here and here to read more about that), but this time the cone is so large that you can see me in the picture. The second photograph below is from the weather radar dome, mounted at the end of the right-hand wingtip. This is a rather unusual location, on twin engine aircraft, it’s normally in the nose, but this is not possible on a single engine aircraft, because the engine is there. It has to be far away from the fuselage to have a good view in both direction, so that’s why it’s so far away.

This visit was really exciting, and I learned a lot, both on aircraft fabrication and how companies should be managed. The relative small size of Pilatus makes it reactive, and the excellent “corporate spirit” - I hate these words, that’s sounds too artificial - is certainly one of the cornerstone of its success. Wandering around guided by Lorenzo was really like visiting a large family business, where each one knows almost everybody.

Definitely a memorable day, and one of the best by-produts of runing this blog. Thank you again Lorenzo for taking the time, sharing you passion, and for opening all these doors for us.

Click here to view all the photos I took during this visit.

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One of the complexity in building plastic aircraft is that the composite fuselages and wings are not that easy to work with. Cirrus delivers fuselages and wings separately, and they got “glued” together in Bembridge. The glueing process takes place at mollecular level, so once started, it can not be stopped.

No way to separate them, nor to reposition the wings if something is not well positioned - understand by the millimeter. We also had the chance to see the famous BRS balistic parachute, about which I will say more later on. The parachute is folded in a separated space, behing the luggage compartment. When the pilot (or a passenger) activates it, it is pulled outside (and through) the fuselage by a rocket (the red cylinder on the photos below). It then unfolds progressively, to avoid a brutal deceleration.

Deploying the parachute is not an easy thing to do. To say it differently, it’s not something that can be done accidently. One must first remove a cache (picture on the left above), then rotate the handle down to bring it out of its hole. The next step is to pull the lever to extend it, by approximately 40 centimeters. The parachute will extend only once the now very long handle will be pulled towards the plane’s floor, which requires a force equivalent to 20 kilograms. There is absolutely no chance at all to do all of that accidentally.

Visiting the place where the Cirrus aircraft actually come to life and get tested was an interesting experience. But the best part of it was at the far end of the hangar… The team was finishing a Cirrus Perspective. Just in case you missed it, this is the next version, integrating the Garmin 1000 glass cockpit, with a new auto-pilot, offering the famous “recovery” button, which can bring the airplane back to wings-level attitude from up to 70° of bank and 50° of pitch. The plane was waiting for us, connected to an external power supply, so we could play with the new avionics.

I immediately felt home, and also appreciated the addition of a keyboard. If you ever filed a flignt plan in a GNS 430 / 530 or G1000, you know how much time can be spent rotating and pressing knobs. The keyboard was definetly missing, and the space on the center pedestal - where the GNS430s are on Avidyne Cirrus - has been re-allocated to the keyboard, the autopilot, and the audiobox. The autopilot has more modes than what light aircraft pilots are used to: Vertical Speed, Vertical Navigation (VNV), and Indicated Air Speed. I particularly like the IAS mode, which somehow transforms the throttle into an vertical speed controller. The autopilot simply maintains the airspeed. More power will make it climb, more power will lower the nose. You want to change flight level smootly ? Switch more to IAS, and push the throttle forward - how good is that ? If I were in position to buy a Cirrus today, I would certainly take this new version. Click here to read why I perfer the G1000 to the Avidyne Entegra.

On our way to the paint shop, we passed by a Cirrus G3 on a parking, and I could not resist the temptation to take the classical picture of the propeller spinner.

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To make the long story short, let’s say that the G1000 is fully integrated. It contains all the following things:

• two NAV / COM / GPS receivers - equivalent to two GNS 530s
• one transponder
• one audiobox
• one ADF receiver (optional)
• one DME receiver (optional)
• and an autopilot (GFC 700 only)

The Avidyne Entegra relies on external units for all these functions. Examining the GPS navigators is a good illustration of the differences. The G1000 is made of two separate units, each one containing something equivalent to a GNS 530. If one of the units is lost, the other will still work, and feed both screens. The Avidyne uses two external GNS 430s. The loss of a screen will not affect the navigators. Even a loss of both screens would leave the pilot with the navigators moving maps. Obviously, a catastrophic complete loss of electrical power would lead to the same effects on both systems. I don’t think that one design is safer than the other, in terms of failures, but it is certainly of paramount importance for the pilot to know how to deal with degraded modes. And remember, there is only one crankshaft anyway…

Now, let’s have a closer look. On all the pictures below, the Avidyne is on the left, and the G1000 on the right.

Click here or on the picture for a higher resolution version

The full integration of the G1000 has some advantages: the pilot interacts only with it. The screens display the usual flying instruments, but also the radio frequencies in use, and the auto-pilot modes (only with the GFC700 autopilot, not present on these pictures), and all of this is controlled via the G1000 rotary-knobs and softkeys. At first sight this makes the Avidyne look more streamlined. Four keys and one single stage rotary know on each side, versus 9 knobs and 18 keys for the G1000. The Garmin display also looks a bit more clutered, but this is also because of all the extra information related to the NAV / COM, ADF, and transponder. I highlighted all these parts on the picture below.

Having all this information packed together makes the G1000 display denser, but it concentrates everything in a single place. The central pedestal in a Cirrus is occupied by the two GNS430s, the audiobox, the transponder, and the autopilot. I did not had the opportunity to fly the SR22 in IMC, but I can imagine that having the radios, and flight plan programming interface rather away from the PFD can make the scanning a bit more difficult.

I read a lot about the Avidyne, and I expected to be somehow disturbed by the fact that the Avidyne PFD is permanently split in two, the top part being dedicated to the attitude indicator, airspeed indicator, altimeter, and vertical speed indicator, while the below part, always depicted on black background, is hosting the HSI. Whatever the bank angle, there is always an horizontal separation between the “ground” part of the attitude indicator and the black part. The G1000 uses the whole screen for the attitude indicator, and the HSI is depicted in the “ground”. Once in flight, this was a perfect non-issue. I got used to the attitude indicator, and to the other parts of the PFD almost instantly. They are not so different from the G1000, but let’s have a closer look.

At first, the king of all instruments, the center of all IFR pilot’s attentions: the attitude indicator. The depiction of the aircraft is quite different. The Avidyne uses a “W” with extended borders. Keep the black segments aligned with the horizon, and the central black dot on the sky / ground limit, and the planw will be straight and level. The G1000 represents the plane with a triangle, and two horizontal pointers on the side. The two pointers are equivalent to the black segments, and the summit of the triangle to the black dot of the Avidyne. The sky pointers are both referenced to a scale with standard 30, 45 and 60 degrees of bank.

There are not so many ways to design a tape-based airspeed indicator, nor a lot to say about it. One difference is the frame around the instrument on the G1000 version, which I personally like. The Avidyne one is a bit too… furtive, but this is really a question of taste. Do I prefer the boxed version because I trained on it first ? Possible.

There are more differences on the right-hand side of the PFD. The altimeters are almost identical, with a bug, the selected altitude on top, and the altimeter setting below. Both are indicating altitude in 20 feet increments, which pass through the window in a continuous way as altitude changes. The bigger difference between the two PFDs resides in the vertical speed indicator. The Avidyne one is like a good old needle, whereas the G1000 uses a pointer moving up and down, in which the vertical rate can be read, and which disappears if the altitude is constant. Another noticeable difference is the presence of a vertical speed bug on the Avidyne. I don’t know if the G1000 versions for higher performance aircraft have one, but the G1000 found in the DA40s does not.

The G1000 HSI is extremely flexible, and can display two bearing pointers which can be coupled to NAV receivers, to the GPSs, or to the ADF. It takes a good standard operating procedure to not get lost, or mix pointers. The Avidyne has only one pointer, which is enough to fly (almost) any IFR procedure. European IFR certification also requires a DME, and the G1000 includes one (click here for more about this external module). The Cirrus SR22 installation has a separate, panel mounted DME. There is another difference in the HSIs: the figures on the Avidyne are always up, whereas those of the G1000 are turning with the windrose. To be fair, I noticed it only now, while looking at the pictures - I did not even saw that difference in flight. If you asked me if the G1000 figures were sometimes up-side down, I would not have been able to answer… at least not correclty.

I flew the Avidyne only once, but thanks to my G1000 experience, this was no big deal. I did not get a full differences training on it, but I reckon that it would not be too long, and particularly much shorter than my initial glass-cockpit conversion. Moving from gauges to glass is definetly a big step. Upgrading from one glass cockpit to another one is way simpler.

Click here to read more about my SR22 flight or visit the archives to find more about the G1000.

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So the day finally came, and after a long but not so tragic Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to London, and an overnight in a typically (read bad) London hotel, Matthew picked me up there, and drove us to Denham. The weather forecast was excellent, but even to English standards, the 200 meters visibility in fog was not good. We could however meet other members of the group, and pre-flight the aircraft. The first impression when meeting with a Cirrus is that it’s a rather large aircraft. 2.71 meters high, and 7.92 meters long for a wingspan of 11.68 meters. Compared to a Saratoga or Bonanza, it looks and feel huge, and the cabin is wide, allowing for lot of room and passengers comfort. I was in a rear passenger seat for the first leg, and despite my 1m90, I was installed comfortably - a true four seater.

The design of the Cirrus doors is well known, and hard to describe - the open by pivoting up and forward. Getting on board is easy, and closing the door requires a special technique: use the arm which is in the center, not directly beside the door. Needless to say, the Cirrus is a plastic plane, made of composite fiber, with the exception of the leaing edge. A close inspection shows the micro-holes of the anti-ice TKS system, which diffuse anti-ice fluide when required. There is also a fluid outlet for each propeller blade, allowing for some propeller de-icing.

The leading edge design is also rather surprising. It includes a vortex generator, but also a kind of “break”, where the profile suddenly jumps by a couple of centimeters.

Another specificity of the Cirrus is its side-stick. It allows for more room in the cockpit, solving one of my long lasting problems: where to put an A4 kneeboard ? On the negative side, no place to attach a chart clip. But why a chart clip when the MFD can display any JeppView chart from its database ?

Flying with the stick is rather comfortable, but requires a strong wrist musculature. The mixture of spring loading and aerodynamic forces on the ailerons makes the stick feel heavy around the roll axis. In comparison, the pitch feels much lighter, making easy to bust levels. This combination remembered me of IFR simulators, which are designed so to force the students to focus on the attitude indicator.

Do I have to say that the dashboard is dominated by the two screens of the Avidyne glass-cockpit ? PFD in front of the pilot, MFD on the right, but oriented towards the pilot, not flat like a G1000. The central pedestal is the home of the audio box, the transponder, the auto-pilot, and the two GNS430s - more on that in a later post about the avionics.

Despite being a modern aircraft, the Cirrus is not FADEC equipped, so there are still two levers to control the engine. Yes, you read it correctly: two, not three. The large “power” lever is a classical throttle, but when pushing it forward, it suddenly feels harder, when the lever reaches the propeller control. Both are mechanically coupled, no need to worry about prop RPM - but no way to reduce RPM to help diminishing the noise. The second lever is a classical mixture control.

The first leg of the day was from Denham to Bembridge. I was sitting in a rear passenger seat, together with Matthew, as another member of the group was in the front left seat, and his son in the front right seat. There is enough room for passengers to feel comfortable, even for long legs. We took-off rapidly once the fog was dissipated, and routed around Heathrow CTR and then directly to Bembridge. The noise level in the cabin is rather low, but the Bose X headsets certainly contributed to reduce it even more.

While I was taking photographs of the PFD, I noted the airspeed… up to 180 knots in cruise ! That’s 20 more than aircraft of the same category, and this despite the fixed landing gear. The 310 horsepower, for a maximum take-off weight of approximately 1600 kilograms are somehow comparable to the 300 horsepower for 1600 kilograms of the Saratoga. The difference in speed and climb performance probably comes from the more modern design of the Cirrus wing.

The side visibility from the passenger seats is fine, but as for most IFR, high-dashboard planes, the forward visibility from the back seats is very limited. It’s obviously better from the front seats. One of the surprising things when being in the front right seat is the assimetry of the dashboard. Some space in front of the co-pilot seat is simply not used, and this makes hard to fly with reference to the natural horizon, as there is no horizontal reference. The foggy atmosphere was also not helping, not to mention my natural tendency to fly IFR…

On the way home, Matthew kindly left me take over the controls of the aircraft. Being in the co-pilot seat, I was flying with my right hand on the stick, and left hand on the power lever. I’m used to fly central stick aircrafts, and this did not feel really different. The armrest makes it really comfortable to fly, and both rudder and elevator trim can be controlled using the hat switch on the stick. The Cirrus is more reactive to control inputs than a Piper single engine, but not as much as a Bonanza or DA40. We got some thermal tubrulence, but the relatively short wings and high weight makes it feel stable. As it’s really roomy, there is no risk to hit the ceiling, even for someone as tall as me. Moreover, the double shoulder harnesses firmly but comfortably maintain the people on board in their seats.

As this was not an instruction flight, I could not fly from the left seat, nor land the aircraft by myself. It’s thus hard for me to say anything about the flare and landing. Both landing were perfectly smooth, but seemed high to me - probably because of the height of the plane itself. I got the same kind of feelings when I learned to fly the Bonanza, and this is exactly what differences training is about.

To conclude, let me say that the Cirrus SR22 is exactly what I do expect from a modern, high-performance, single engine piston aircraft, and I don’t really see any competitor for the time being. May be the DA50 will take this role later on… If I had enough money, and access to a Cirrus, I would not hesitate for a single second.

I will post later about the avionics, and other events during this week-end, and can obviously not close this post without a warm thank you to Matthew.

Read more: click here to read my comparison of the Avidyne Entegra and the G1000.

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The return flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt was also very interesting, particularly it terms of traffic. We took-off behind a Singapore Airlines flight bound to Singapore. This was operated by an Airbus 380, and I could good pictures of it. So here is a short list of what you can expect soon:

• Cirrus test-flight feed-back
• Comparison between G1000 and Avidyne glass cockpits
• New photo galleries showing the SR22 and the Avidyne
• Photos of the trip home, including the Airbus 380, and many other surprises

Preparing all of that will take some time, but I hope that everything will be online by next Thurdsay. Because the next week-end will also be a less ordinary one…

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To make the trip a bit more interesting, and possibly more enjoyable, I will change it into a little experiment, and measure my own transit time. I’ll note the times at which I’ll pass the different steps:

• Reaching the airport by train
• Time for check-in (hopefully quick because automated)
• Time to pass the security screening(s)
• Bus transfer, boarding time
• Taxi time, time at the holding point
• Taxi time after landing
• Time to reach the immigration booth
• Time to reach the public are
• Time to reach the train station

The scientist in me has to say that a single measure in each direction will certainly not be representative. True, but I like the concept of the experience, and if it’s as fun as I expect, I’ll try to generalize it to all my travels. If you’re an airport user as well, and want to join, I’ll be happy to relay your measurements here. Will my own trip be heaven or hell ? You’ll know more in the next days… and you’ll also know soon why I’m ready to face up a possibly harassing, despite short, trip.

Read more:

My personal views about Frankfurt airport and London City airport

Check the “Best European Airport” section in The Archives

PS: shortly after composing this post, I received an e-mail from Lufthansa, telling me that it was possible to make my check-in online. This went fine, and I now have a PDF boarding pass, I can go directly to the gate… I mean, through security.

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Piper, Cessna, and Diamond all offer a full range of aircraft: basic trainers (Piper Cadet, C152, DA-20), four seater single (Piper Archer, C172, DA-40), high performance single (Piper Saratoga, C210, DA-50 - not yet available), twin engine (Piper Seneca, C310, DA-42), and jets (Piper Jet, Citation family, D-Jet). Moving to jet is certainly a big thing, all the other steps are facilitated within a family. After all, a Piper Arrow is nothing else than an Archer with a retractable landing gear, and a Saratoga is a single enginge Seneca. The cockpit layouts, and general flying characteristics are the same. If you ever flew a Saratoga and seat in a Seneca, you will feel like at home.

Some clubs, FTOs and FBOs operate within a single family, while other have a mixed fleet. My personal ramblings took me to various places, and various aircraft. I even flew once a Liberty XL2. Click here to read more about all aircraft I flew.

For some pilots, flying a family is almost like a religion, and changing would be a sacrilege. So what about you ? Have you spent all your career in the same type ? Did you change ? Did you like the change ? Have you been given the opportunity to change ? Do you want to change, or is it simply not an option ? I can’t wait to read your answers…

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The next big step in my life is to buy a house, together with Mrs. PlasticPilot, in the region between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Frankfurt is a very busy airport, and many departures use runway 18, flying over the Darmstadt area. And this includes many Airbus 340 and Boeing 747, which don’t have the world’s best climb ratios. We know that aircraft noise could (will ?) be an issue. Not that much as in Gonesse, but being 17 kilometers away, under the departures path, we expect some noise. This is also why we will visite the house and the neigborhood several times, at different times of day. Frankfurt is linked to the entire world, so there is the typical departures wave to North America in late morning, and a second one to Asia and Middle-east in the evening - all using heavy aircraft types.

We also know that arrival and departures route can change, and make the quantity of noise we would get daily really different. We discussed it, and it will be a factor in our decision. No hidden things, no surprises. But we would certainly NOT buy a house located 800 meters from an airport. Even one which is closed at night. Local regulations can evolve, and assuming that a night or week-end ban will last for ever is simply wrong. Even if someone promised me that there would soon be a ban, the same would apply. So why do some people live so close to airports ? Why do they not move to another place ?

Could that be a question of money ? Well… houses or flats located is so noisy areas are notoriously cheap to buy. And if the unlucky buyer does not want to sell at a lower price, it has no chance to sell. The prices can only get lower and lower, thus annihilating the possibility for owners to sell their house and get another one somewhere else - except by injecting extra cash in the operation, which is not always possible. However, buying such a house seems to me like a serious lack of common sense. I don’t know if people who did it visited the place on days where the airports were on strike, or if they simply not noticed the noise. This seems simply impossible… Or were there naive enough to think that there would never be night traffic ?

This is a sad situation, but what to do ? Is it normal to allow real-estate developers to build so close to airports ? Probably not. Shall the authorities ban night traffic ? This would endanger local economy, destroy jobs, and reduce local communities income. Shall the state pay for the relocation of the concerned persons in a quieter area ? Well, being silly is not illegal, and do not create right for compensation by the state… Imagine what refunding all silly persons around would cost !

I admit it, this post was driven by an unnerving situation, and is may be a bit severe… but it was so good to say it. This was not my first post about airport neighbors, check the links below for more.

Airport neighbors are our friends

How a modern aviation policy should be

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Loosing an aircraft is never good, particularly during the certification phase Even worse, the in a new category. The attention NTSB is giving to the LSA category will certainly increase, and this is a good thing. LSAs could be the renewal of private aviation, it’s not the time to start having safety doubts.

I don’t have more information that what has been published by AOPA and avWeb, and this is why I initially replayed the information via my Twitter feed, and on StumbleUpon. Then I saw in the traffic stats of this blog that my post “Cessna in China - Good or Evil ?” was skyrocketing again, I guessed that the polemic would restart. Some Cessna clients withdrawn their orders when the decision to buy the Skycatcher in China was announced. By that time, I wrote:

By assembling the SkyCatcher in China, Cessna attemps to maintain an acceptable price for low-budget pilots while keeping high quality and safety. Any accident occuring in the early in the life of an aircraft type has catastrophic impacts. If that would occur with the SkyCatcher the “China” factor will certainly pop-up even before investigators will reach the crash site, so Cessna will have to be really careful about the work done in China.

I googled “cessna skycatcher crash china”, and the second link was leading to a page with comments like:

• Not good. Built overseas. Sounds like an in-flight break-up. Glad the pilot got out.
• Built in China. Sheesh. Can’t even get a good plane anymore.
• Skycather: Made in China.
• Time for an embargo.
• Made in China… red flag!

And this in the middle of various hypotheses trying to explain the bangs and sparks (remember, it was flying at 10′000 feet… but could the bangs and sparkes have occured during the descend ?). In the middle of them, was a single:

• Accidents happen! Honest!

To which I can adhere. The plane is produced in China, yes, but assembled in USA, and the program was about stalls at rather high altitude. Entering a spin is not easy (a flat one even less), and test pilots know what they do. Was that an enhanced “bad hair day”, or is there something wrong with the aircraft ? I’ll keep an eye on the story, and keep you posted… But not before the mediatic and “China factor” argument will be over. This blog is about aviation, not in politics.

UPDATE on 7th of October 2008: More news via AOPA.

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As you probably did not guess from the above, I’m a fan of Stormscope, and I’m not alone, given the number of units sold. As for all equipment, Stormscope is as good (or bad) as the pilot using it. Installing a weather radar in a single engine airplane is not easy, as the nose is usually occupied by the engine. The cost and weight of a radar also make it prohibitive for single engine piston aircraft. Single engine turbine is something else, as they are heavier, and operate at higher altitudes. While Stormscope is not a tool to avoid cumulus and CBs while flying IMC, it can bring precious information for strategic planing, and is in some respects better than radar.

It’s operation is easier (see the post from Sam in the links section of this post), and it provides information up to 200 Nautical Miles, on 360 degrees. Radar range depends of altitude, and detection usually covers an area from 45 degrees on the left to 45 degrees to the right. Evaluating the distance to a CB when flying VMC is not easy. Stormscope offers basic ranging, and valuable information about the development of the situation. When the screen becomes too populated with too many dots in the direction of flight, knowing what is going on behind the plane (in the airspace known as “escape route”, or “Plan B”) makes decision making easier.

The first time I changed from a Stormscope equipped plane to another one, I got a surprise: one was gyro-slaved, and the other not. This sounds like chinese to you ? Let me clarify that. When a strike occurs, the Stormscope measures its the range, and relative bearing, to display a dot on the screen. A gyro-slaved device receives heading from the flux-valve, so if the aircraft’s heading changes, the whole display is updated, so the position of the spots remains valid. With simpler (non-slaved) devices, the dots simply stay where they are. If you decide to turn because your Stormscope shows CBs in front, and don’t reset it, it’ll look the same after the turn… Here again, make sure that you know your on-board equipment, before you start your flight.

The picture below shows a classical (gyro-slaved) Stormscope. It is the small screen to the left of the control-colum, below the slip-skid indicator. The buttons control the range, and allow to clear the memory. This aicraft is equipped with a GNS430, but it was not coupled with the Stromscope.

Modern cockpits, like the G1000, allow for a full integration. The strikes can be displayed on the MFD, in a 90 or 360 degrees display, alone, or combined with map, topography, or terrain warnings. If you look in details the inset on the PFD on the second photo, you’ll see the Stormscope symbol, but not strikes (that was a nice day…).

A reminder about glass-cockpit integration. It’s not because strikes are displayed on a nice, wide screen, integrated with other information that the detection is more accurate. All the drawbacks and advantages I mentionned earlier relate to the detection technology (see the wikipedia entry in the links section), not to the display system. A wrong measurement remains wrong, even when displayed on the nicest screen in the world.

Interestingly, the conlusion is one more time the same: know your avionics, or it will kill you. Don’t mistake a Stormscope for a weather radar, know how to use it, build some experience, and you’ll remain on the safe side. This applies to so many things in aviation that it is probably a golden rule…

Read more:

Sam from Blogging at FL250 on using weather radar

AOPA Pilot paper (June 1997) about sparks detection

www.stormscope.net - have a look at the FAQ

Wikipedia, about lightning detectors

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