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An iPad Gotcha

pvalovich

Well Known Member
Three hours into a late afternoon flight from Sullivan, MO (UUV) to Rostraver, PA (FWQ) VFR at 9.5 on autopilot. Perfect weather but with a rapidly developing line of showers ahead (they weren't there when I took off). Descended to 3.5 to get beneath broken clouds. Thought I hit altitude hold with Nav and Track already selected on the AP. Started playing with Foreflight on the iPad kneeboard on my left leg to figure a way around the precip. Foreflight weather was intermittent, so I was heads down way too long. Finally looked around and I was passing through 2.1K in a slight descent. Still 1000 ft. agl, but was surprised and angry that I had lost situation awareness so badly that I was 1500 ft. below where I thought I was.

Lesson learned - our modern gadgets provide amazingly useful information, but getting and interpreting that info always must be secondary to flying the airplane and ALWAYS being aware of where you are.

Certainly an F grade for my pilot performance. And for those of you reading this who may be thinking new guy mistake - I've been flying accident-free since 1964 with over 8,000 hours, 870 in my RV-8A. Might as well try to learn from the mistakes of others - you can't live long enough to survive them all first hand.
 
Thanks for sharing that. As a guy close to the other end of the flight experience spectrum (five years, under 200 hours) it just re-affirms the lessons drummed into me by flight instructors and a couple of mistakes of my own. It certainly removes the temptation to think, "Well, I'd never do something like that".
 
sounds like a case of electro hypnosis. :confused:
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Lesson learned - our modern gadgets provide amazingly useful information, but getting and interpreting that info always must be secondary to flying the airplane and ALWAYS being aware of where you are.

....

Good post thanks for reminding. iPad is my primary EFB and sometimes I do stare at it longer then I should.
 
We can all learn from others experiences, good & bad. With nearly 40 yrs of driving planes I still fly first, then navigate & communicate, was drummed in to me all those years ago .What I do now re an electronic device like an iPad is include it in my scan & like all other instruments I never fixate on just one.

That's a good story, a valuable lesson learned am sure:)
 
Work flying rule is one guy does the box or whatever, the other guy's only job is to fly the airplane. That becomes a bit harder single pilot as you learned. I have a personal rule when flying single pilot that when I am inside fiddling with electronics that I need to look up every ten seconds or so. Doesn't sound like very long but count off ten seconds with your watch. You should be able to get a couple letters of an identifier or most of a freq tuned, take a peek and then finish. As you found out it is very easy to get fixated on a single problem to the exclusion of other duties. All this wonderful cockpit technology is sometimes a case of "more" not necessarily being "better". Don't get me wrong. I think having the technology is a good thing but you have to be disciplined on how to manage it.
I see this all the time giving flight instruction and it is an example of innocent "better" info dragging your head into the cockpit. Think about when most of us learned way back when tachometers were sweep pointers on a round dial, if we were within the needle width of the desired RPM that was close enough. Now how many times have you watched somebody with a digital tach fiddle with the engine controls to get exactly (or within 5 or so RPM) the RPM they wanted. How long did that take and where were they looking? Not outside. It is so easy to sucked in to playing with the cockpit toys that we forget the main job is to fly the airplane.
Good for you for fessing up and using it as a teaching moment for both yourself and others.
 
+1

Work flying rule is one guy does the box or whatever, the other guy's only job is to fly the airplane. That becomes a bit harder single pilot as you learned. I have a personal rule when flying single pilot that when I am inside fiddling with electronics that I need to look up every ten seconds or so. Doesn't sound like very long but count off ten seconds with your watch. You should be able to get a couple letters of an identifier or most of a freq tuned, take a peek and then finish. As you found out it is very easy to get fixated on a single problem to the exclusion of other duties. All this wonderful cockpit technology is sometimes a case of "more" not necessarily being "better". Don't get me wrong. I think having the technology is a good thing but you have to be disciplined on how to manage it.
I see this all the time giving flight instruction and it is an example of innocent "better" info dragging your head into the cockpit. Think about when most of us learned way back when tachometers were sweep pointers on a round dial, if we were within the needle width of the desired RPM that was close enough. Now how many times have you watched somebody with a digital tach fiddle with the engine controls to get exactly (or within 5 or so RPM) the RPM they wanted. How long did that take and where were they looking? Not outside. It is so easy to sucked in to playing with the cockpit toys that we forget the main job is to fly the airplane.
Good for you for fessing up and using it as a teaching moment for both yourself and others.

I recently gave a flight review to the owner of an RV-10 equipped with dual Garmin G3x's. My main focus during the flight portion of the review was to observe how much "head down" time occurred throughout the flight. He was obviously quite familiar with the G3X, and incorporated both of them in his flight regimen, but I noted that there was a rather significant amount of head down time involved while doing this.

I also found it interesting that his "method" for searching for and locating nearby traffic was to look at the G3X screen first (primary traffic search), and then looking outside to locate the aircraft (secondary search). ADSB traffic can be a great tool for situational awareness, but I was a little concerned about the amount of time being spent looking at the screen instead of directly outside the plane.

Technology always has its good traits. However, it still requires the "human element" to figure out how and when to use it so that it does not become a detriment. I totally support the 10 second rule, and would probably even reduce that timing just a bit more.
 
Great post, I have had my head down too much also checking weather. Thanks for the honesty\post and reminding me the importance of heads up. Also like the reply about 10 second rule for cockpit activities.

Steve
 
Another philosophy that a single pilot can adopt when under such a work load is to not conduct any non essential activities whilst within say 500 ft of an expected capture altitude, whether that be on auto pilot or being hand flown. Much like the Airlines do that usually limit their heads down activities (away from the watching the PFD)in the last 1000ft, this higher limit is due the higher ROD in a pressurized machine. The clue was the 1000ft to go to Alt chime.

It's all food for thought & makes us all reevaluate what we take for granted inside a cockpit when under certain higher work load times.
Technology has exploded in the light A/C field & makes it all exciting but in some ways it has also taken away the initial reason why we fly such basic machines in the first place, to have fun looking outside in the most simplistic way:)

Personally I don't have any fancy stuff in my own plane (old school, round dials, basic) other than an iPad which I only activate when going x country, my professional flying is a diff matter as I have no choice:)
 
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I think one other take-away here would be to ensure that every change of a system "state" is *confirmed* prior to moving to the next step, whatever that is. Whether it's dialing in a frequency, changing a target altitude, changing the AP mode, etc., make the change, *confirm* the change is in the system, is correct and has been accepted, then go to the next step.

I think we get a little too reliant on a quick button press or a knob turn or what have you, and we expect that it is all correct and our attention goes elsewhere too soon, sometimes.

Good lesson, and thanks for sharing the experience...
 
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